When I addressed you from this ancient and honourable chair at the end of my first year of office, I recalled some of the striking variations there have been in the length of tenure of its occupants. In contrasting, for example, the two-year term of Frederic Ouvry (1876–8) with the thirty-four years of Lord Aberdeen (1812–46) and thirty years of Lord Stanhope (1846–76) that immediately preceded it, I showed there was already a precedent for a term shorter than the five-year stretch that has been customary for the last eighty years, and foreshadowed that now in the time of our greatly expanded Society there might be reasonable cause for invoking it. And accordingly, exactly one hundred years after Ouvry decided to decline re-election after holding the President's office for a mere two years, I for my part have decided to mark this particular centenary by not standing for reelection after holding it for three. I am aware that in doing so I have myself created a new precedent, or rather re-created an old one. However, this is but a single and personal decision, and unless and until Council and the Society resolve to shorten the maximum tenure of five years laid down in Statutes, Chapter VI, Section V, there can be no obligation on any who come after me to follow it. The decision has not been reached lightly, and any feeling of relinquishing a burden is offset by very real sentiments of regret, compensated only by the certainty that what is served above all is the best interest of the Society. And this is my opportunity to thank the Society for all the support and friendship extended to me throughout these last three years by the Fellowship at large and especially by members of Council and of the various committees, whose tolerant understanding has been a constant help to me in all our deliberations. In particular I would acknowledge the debt which not only I but all our Fellows owe to my brother officers and, not least, to the Assistant Secretary and Librarian and all our small staff, for their unremitting services in furthering the many-sided activities of this great institution.