PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
Conservatism and Plasticity.
Before I enter upon the consideration of the topic I have chosen as the subject of this address I should like to call the attention of members of the Society to a grave situation which has arisen in our affairs through the great increase in the cost of printing and the price of paper. When this situation was considered by the Council during the past year it seemed at first as if only two alternatives lay before us; either to raise the subscription of the Society or to cut down extensively the amount of our publications. Without an increase in the subscription we cannot expect to return to the pre-war extent of our publications, but the Council has decided to attempt to keep the decrease within as small bounds as possible by starting a movement to strengthen our membership, and it is to be hoped that every member of the Society will do his best to help this movement. The cost of printing, which is the most serious item in our expenditure, is constant whatever the number of our members, so that every increase in membership will help to make possible an increase in the most important part of our activity, the diffusion of the knowledge of primitive belief and custom. It is a bitter tragedy that just at the moment when the spread of civilisation has made the need for the collection of vanishing knowledge especially acute, and when new students are entering upon the work of collection with enthusiasm greater perhaps than
