Probably his best-known work is the Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry, a huge sixteen-volume book of reference, the compilation of which occupied most of his later years. His best work, from the scientific standpoint, was that connected with refractories, and the manufacture of special steels; work which assumed great importance during the critical years following 1914. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1927. He died at his residence at Putney on May 24th, 1938, just three days before our last annual meeting. James Scott Maclaurin came out from England with his parents when he was still a boy, and, after attending the Auckland Grammar School, graduated from Auckland University College with first-class honours in chemistry. The excellence of his chemical work at the University gained for him the Fellowship of the Chemical Society of London. In 1894 he was elected to an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, but, for family reasons, decided not to accept it. After some years of private practice as an analyst, he joined the Mines Department, and found that his great ability as an analyst enabled him to answer satisfactorily the many questions put to him by the various Government departments that sought his aid. Later he became Dominion Analyst and continued to superintend the growing staff of the Dominion Laboratory until the end of 1930, when he retired. The arduous duties of his several positions left him but scant time for the research work for which he was so eminently fitted, bout some of his official reports show as much original chemical work as if they had been studies in purely academic science. His thesis for the degree of D.Sc. has become a classic in the literature of metallurgy, and his discovery of the important part played by oxygen in the solutions used for recovering gold led to vastly increased yields of that metal. He died at Wellington on the 19th January, 1939. On your behalf I extend very hearty congratulations to the Society's Vice-President, Dr. P. Marshall, upon his being unanimously selected by the General Council of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science as President-elect of the Association. I also congratulate another member of the Council, Dr. W. R. B. Oliver, upon his election as a British Empire Member of the British Ornithologists Union. The Standing Committee's report has recalled to your minds the main activities of the Society during the past year, and has probably suggested a few points for discussion. On April 26th of this year (and therefore too late for inclusion in the report), the Wellington Philosophical Society, one of the oldest of our member-bodies, decided to change its name to Royal Society of New Zealand (Wellington Branch).