PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
The Scientific Aspects of Folklore.
Thirty-three years, the average length of a generation, have passed since this Society was founded. We have thus attained the period of fullest maturity, and we should have prepared ourselves for the serious work of life. If by this time we have not put away childish things, and have not adopted scientific methods of investigation, our labour has been in vain, and we cannot justify our claims to take a place in the ranks of those older branches of learning whose position in the world of knowledge is assured. The special subject on which I venture to address you this evening is the relations of folklore to those sciences with which it is most closely associated.
But before discussing questions such as these, my first duty is to express our feelings of sorrow at the loss of those fellow-workers who have recently passed away. Four of these were members of the service to which I have the honour to belong; three of them were personal friends. Sir A. Lyall will be remembered for that exceptionally profound appreciation of the religious problems of the East which is displayed in his essays on the philosophy of Hinduism and the popular religion of Berar; Sir D. Ibbetson for his investigations into the folklore and beliefs of the Panjab peasantry; Sir H. H. Risley for the foundation of the Ethnographical Survey of India, his classical
