In commencing the proceedings of the second Annual Meeting of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, allow me to express the pleasure which it gives me to be present here to-day, and my regret that I was not able to attend the first meeting last year at Glasgow. I feel it to be incumbent on me to give some opening address, but at the same time it must not be long, since many other subjects claim attention.

In the first place I think I may well congratulate the Society on its present condition, and contrast it with some of the predictions made little more than a year ago. We were told by men well-known in the mineralogical world that no such Society as our own could possibly be established—that, even if it could, it would be of no use, unless it published a Journal—which it most certainly never could afford.