THE! chairman's ADDRESS. 909 



I especially draw your attention to this matter because our 

 fellow-member, Dr. Cobb, whose recent accession to our little 

 band of working members we are glad to welcome, and who since 

 his connection with the Department of Agriculture has had under 

 investigation the question of rust on wheat in this colony, at an 

 early stage of his observations also found that in the specimens 

 submitted to him by far the commonest rust was Puccinia 

 riobigovera, D.C., and not P. graminis. This result was some 

 months ago announced in the daily papers, and full particulars 

 are given in the " Agricultural Gazette," Vol. I, No. 3, p. 185. 



To the newly established Forest Department our hopes turn 

 not only for a check to the wholesale destruction of timber which 

 has been going on for so long, to the conserving of such areas as 

 are still available, and to the |)lanting and replanting of suitable 

 tracts of country, but for the realization in this colony of a matter 

 touched upon by Baron von Mueller, in his presidential address 

 at the second meeting of the Australasian Association, namely 

 the setting apart of areas in different and suitable parts of the 

 colony in which the vegetation and its accompanying fauna may 

 be left untouched, and preserved for educational purposes. Surely 

 our utilitarian necessities are not of so pressing a character as to 

 require every square foot of our richest and best timbered areas 

 to be delivered up to the settler's axe and lire-stick. Compara- 

 tively few of even our native-born population know by experience, 

 from artistic representations, or even by adequate description, the 

 beauty and luxuriance of our brushes and semi-tropical scrubs, 

 now alas in danger of altogether disappearing. As means of 

 communication improve, as they are steadily doing, such districts 

 as I speak of will be gradually brought within easy reach of the 

 metropolis, and thus become more accessible to the naturalist, 

 the artist, the writer, and the lover of nature, let us hope not 

 when it is altogether too late, and when the characteristic 

 vegetation has entirely disappeared. 



Of the good likely to accrue from the establishment in some of 

 our country towns of branches of the Sydney Technological 

 Museum much may I think be anticipated. The conditions of 



