OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 93 



This difficulty may, I think, be much reduced, if not ultimately 

 entirely obviated, by means of our society. 



With this view I would suggest that upon any revision or re- 

 classification of a group of plants or animals undertaken by a 

 member of the society, such revision or reclassification should be 

 accompanied by reproduced descriptions of each genus and species, 

 with proper references to the original authors. 



Of course these pirated descriptions should be avoided where the 

 original work is at all attainable. 



My position as President of this Society gives me no right to 

 thrust my advice upon you, but I am desirous of giving assistance, 

 in so far as my judgment approves, in contributing to the useful- 

 ness of the society, and I claim to know to some extent how that 

 can be best accomplished. 



I am convinced that we cannot do better in the present state of 

 Natural History in Australia than confine our attention to observ- 

 ing, cataloguing, and describing. The synthetical work may well, 

 I think, be left for the present to the legion of writers who aspire 

 to what is foolishly called " high science." 



The reason why I recommend descriptive catalogues is because 

 they are not only what are most required (our knowledge of the 

 Fauna of Australia being still very limited), but because any 

 generalization of, or deductions from, what we do know cannot be 

 of much value with our present imperfect knowledge. 



Something has already been done in this direction in this country. 

 Mr. Kreft, the late Curator of the Australian Museum, published 

 some yeai-s ago an excellent work on the then known snakes of 

 Australia. The late Dr. Grey, of the British Museum, published 

 also, some years ago, " The Lizards of Australia ;" and Mr. Masters 

 has compiled catalogues of our Coleoptera and Diurnal Lepidopfera. 



There is no better exercise for the student than the describing of 

 new species, and there certainly is no better way of making himself 

 useful to the workers in other spheres of Natural History who have 

 not the same opportunities of observation and comparison. Classi- 

 fication and nomenclature which involves the description of new 

 .species are to science what grammar and words are to a language. 

 Without them it becomes impossible to benefit by the observations 



