My first duty is to thank you for the honour you have conferred upon me in electing me as your President for the year. Once all mathematicians were astronomers and all astronomers were mathematicians. But now only some astronomers are mathematicians, and I fear that I can only claim to be one to a very limited extent. It was, however, my good fortune to be a member of a college where your ex-President was a lecturer, and to have learned there, from him and others of a very distinguished society, something of the pleasure to be obtained from the study of Mathematics.