TEANS ACTIONS 



OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



190Q. 



I. — MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art. I. — The Bird as the Labourer of Man. 

 By W. T. L. Teavees, F.L.S. 



[Presidential Address to the Wellington Philosophical Society, 5th August, 



1902.] 



.\ftee you had done me the honour of electing me to the 

 position of President of this Society for the current year I 

 resolved to deal, in my opening address, with the structure 

 and action of the geysers which form so attractive a feature 

 of the country stretching from Tokaanu to White Island, in- 

 cluding the Eotorua district, and incidentally with some of 

 the remarkable features which have characterized the recent 

 volcanic outbursts in Martinique and St. Vincent, and to 

 again call your attention to the prinie causes of all such 

 phenomena. It may be recollected by some of you that I 

 brought this subject before our Society in papers read during 

 the sessions of 1877 and 1878 ; but the views which I then 

 ventured to submit were not favourably received by such of 

 our members as claimed to possess any large degree of geo- 

 logical knowledge, chiefly on the ground that Sir Charles 

 Lyell had always treated such questions as not being pro- 

 perly within the range of geological inquiry. It was, there- 

 fore, with no little gratification that I read the address 

 delivered by Professor Sollas to the geological section of 

 the British Association in 1900, in which he propounded 

 precisely similar views, and pointed out that, at the present 

 day, geologists are no longer justified in asserting that cos- 

 mogony is alien to geology. 



But a question the proper solution of which is certainly of 

 far greater importance to this colony has recently arisen, and 

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