PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
The custom seems to be established that your President is expected to make his retirement as well as his election the occasion for an Address, quite irrespective of whether he has anything he particularly wishes to say. This burden was especially heavy on our late President, owing to his tenure of office lasting through the greater part of the duration of the war, but his nimble wit and ready pen found him equal to the occasion. A considerable spell of ill health and a marked increase in University work during the past year have precluded me from offering to you any elaborate essay, and I must content myself, if not yourselves, with a few desultory remarks.
I must confess myself rather in sympathy with the older folklorists when they regarded folklore simply as the lore of the folk—the folk being in this sense defined as the backward element in a more civilised community. This is a distinct line of study. The actions, oral traditions and beliefs of the folk were considered as “survivals.” Personally I should be inclined to speak of them as “vestiges.”
In biological nomenclature we may speak of certain ancient types which here and there persist as “survivals,” that is, forms which, owing to various conditions which need not here be specified, have survived to the present day. There is no reason to suppose them as being essentially different from their forebears of past geological ages, they still retain their individuality and functions.
