Professor Frank Sear translated the Latin inscription in 1985 and it reads:
The ÐÓ°ÉÖ±²¥ Council [give this bowl] to Horace Lamb, MA Fellow of the Royal Society of London, sometime Elder Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the ÐÓ°ÉÖ±²¥ of Adelaide, Doctor of Divinity, in remembrance of his continuing service to the ÐÓ°ÉÖ±²¥, AD 1898.