Some few years ago, when the Annual Meeting of this Association was held at York, I had the temerity to inflict upon it a paper dealing with the subject of mental defect. Whether one derives a certain subconscious sense of security in speaking on one's native heath I hardly dare speculate. Whether, on the other hand, the circumstance of propinquity, as it were, to one's roof-tree stirs and stimulates that spark of local patriotism which lies latent in the humblest I leave to the conjecture of those of my hearers who may be psycho-analytically minded and sufficiently interested.