I have felt no little difficulty in choosing a subject for the remarks which it is my privilege, in the honourable position of President, now to address to you. Those who have preceded me in the office have, in their several discourses, treated so fully of the most important matters relating to the department of the specialty in which we are engaged, that there seemed little left for me to say. As Editor of your Journal, my opinions, too, are for the most part sufficiently well known to you. On considering what I should do under these circumstances, I first resolved to select for my address the evidence of evolution and degeneration of mind which the study of psychology, healthy and morbid, reveals, with special reference to their bearing on the well-known views of Mr. Darwin. I am persuaded that some weighty facts and arguments in support of these views may yet be drawn from a scientific study of mind in all its manifestations—in animal as well as in man, in man savage as well as in man civilized, in disease as well as in health. Without giving an opinion upon the great question of the day—whether man be or be not descended from an arboreal baboon, it might be justly argued with no little force that, if he were so descended, or had so ascended, many of the psychological facts might be expected to be very much as they are now. The battle ground which the opponents of Mr. Darwin have chosen and hold cannot certainly be pronounced quite impregnable, if the attack be made in the right quarter. This design, though it was partly carried into execution, I thought it best, however, on reflection, to abandon as unsuited to the occasion, and, in the end, resolved to limit my remarks to matters of more immediate practical interest to us as physicians engaged in the care and treatment of insane persons. What I have to say will be of a somewhat desultory character, and for this I must bespeak your indulgence, my aim being to excite discussion and to elicit opinions on matters of great practical interest, rather than to treat them in an elaborate and systematic manner. Instead of attempting to make a scientific display, I shall hope to elicit a display of your scientific experience, by asking, in the Socratic spirit, what we really know, and what we only think we know, concerning some matters of weighty consequence in our specialty.