Presented by the President at the 104th Annual General Meeting in the Queen's University of Belfast, Friday April 4th, 1997.

The President thanked Dr Roberts for hosting this year's AGM in Northern Ireland, as well as providing a welcome opportunity for members to visit some of the wonderful sites of malacological interest that many (including the President himself) had previously only seen in tantalising slides shown during talks by Dr Roberts and his colleagues.

Membership

Fourteen new members and the same number of resignations and/or deaths, together with 13 lapsed memberships, brought the membership down from 325 in 1995/6 to 312 this year. The President again urged all to recruit new members to the Society, particularly young researchers entering the field, to ensure its future health. Council is currently planning a young researchers conference, primarily to foster the exchange of information and provide an opportunity to hone talks for presentation elsewhere, though also to raise awareness of the Society among the rising generation of malacologists.

Meetings

The Society had a direct hand in only two meetings during the year. Rather than reflecting inactivity by Council, however, this restraint was planned in view of the several other important meetings concerning molluscs organised by other bodies. Full accounts of some of these, as well as the Society's own meetings, can be read in the Society's Bulletins.

The Society joined forces with the Association of Applied Biologists and the British Crop Protection Council to sponsor the last-named body's 66th Symposium, on Slug and Snail Pests in Agriculture, at the University of Kent at Canterbury, during 24-26 September 1996, organised by Ian Henderson (IACR-Rothamsted). Attracting 160 delegates from 16 countries, this was a widely ranging meeting that addressed not only a diversity of approaches to the theme of the title, but also the conservation problems arising from such measures.

Repeating the successful pattern of last year, another joint soiree was convened with the Linnean Society, at the latter's rooms at Burlington House, on 6 February 1997. Organised by Georges Dussart (Canterbury Christ Church College), its theme was Molluscan Invasions, and the talks ranged again from living to fossil examples.

A number of meetings are in the pipeline for 1997/98, including one on the next generation of malacological pioneers (following the previous year's successful meeting on that theme), the young researchers' conference mentioned above, and a meeting early in the New Year on Molluscs and Molecules. We plan to hold the next AGM in Sunderland in March 1998.

Publications

Journal of Molluscan Studies. Volume 62 for 1996 contained 60 papers and research notes, totalling 549 pages. The provenance of the papers (country of first author) is dominantly European, with 30% of the papers from continental western Europe, 22% from the United Kingdom and Ireland, 11% from Asia, 10% from the USA and Canada, 7% from Australia and New Zealand and a further 9% from Africa and South America. During 1996, 102 papers were submitted for publication and around 40% of these were rejected for various reasons. The President expressed the thanks of Council to John Taylor for his continued efficient editorship of the Society's highly successful journal, and conveyed thanks in turn, on behalf of the Editor and Council for the support and efforts of the Associate Editors - David Brown, Peter Mordan, Elizabeth Platts and David Reid.

In addition, Bill Bailey was thanked for maintaining the lively reportage of events and other pertinent matters in the Bulletin, issued twice a year (February and August).

Awards

Three awards promote the aim of the Society -"encouraging the study of living and fossil Mollusca". Two are for quality in work already done - the Annual Award, for an outstanding initial contribution to the study of molluscs, and the Sir Charles Maurice Yonge Award, for significant published work on bivalves. The Centenary Research Grants provide support for promising work in prospect. This year's awards are reported elsewhere in the Bulletin.

Members were encouraged to nominate suitable candidates for the Annual Award and/or bring the Centenary Research Grants to the notice of those seeking support for a malacological investigation: information on these is given at the back of thisi Bulletin, and now also once a year in the Journal.

A Society Website

Council is currently planning a website, as another means of broadening awareness of its activities. This is being master-minded by Mark Davies.

Council

Finally, prior to stepping down, the President warmly thanked members of Council for their contributions throughout this and previous years, particularly commending the tireless drudgery of those essential pillars of the Society, Georges Dussart (Secretary), Dai Roberts (Treasurer) and John Taylor (Editor). He further thanked the retiring members of the Council, Vice-President Alan Bebbington (promptly welcomed back under co-option as Archivist), and ordinary members, Elizabeth Platts and Richard Preece, for their efforts on behalf of the Society. Finally he wished his successor, David Reid, well as the Society's next President.

Peter Skelton