486 president's address. 



history, and our knowledge in many departments is mere technical 

 barrenness. No person need plead the want of a subject either in 

 South Australia or any other portion of the Continent, and it is a 

 source of great consolation to those who have been long, and, as 

 as it were, singlehanded, in the field, to hail the accession of such 

 an industrious and learned naturalist as Professor Tate. He has 

 succeeded in enlisting the sympathies of many, and the recent 

 papers by Messrs. 0. Tepper, H. H. Hayter, Gr. Scoular, W. T. 

 Bedwall, and Dr. Schomburgh are a proof of the new life he has 

 infused into the men of science of the Adelaide Colony. I refer 

 especially to the anniversary address of Professor Tate to the 

 Adelaide Philosophical Society, read at the close of last year's 

 session as a compendium of all that has been written on the 

 geology of South Australia, incorporated with the Professor's 

 personal observation, and with what he has been able to gather 

 by correspondence with colonial geologists. This is an elaborate 

 essay, of a character much like the late Rev. W. B. Clarke's 

 " Sedimentary Eocks of New South Wales," but with especial 

 richness of detail in paleontology, in which particular Mr. Clarke's 

 essay was defective. Professor Tate has made an attempt to 

 correlate all the Australian formations, but especially the tertiary 

 ones. It is the first detailed attempt that has been made. Some 

 of the conclusions arrived at differ from my own, at least those I 

 had formed, and published some years ago. The learned 

 Professor has however so thoroughly examined the subject that 

 I believe his system will prove the beginning of the correct 

 solution. An entirely satisfactory one must necessarily be distant 

 but it is encouraging to think it is in such good hands. Professor 

 Tate has also published a Zoologica et Palaeontologica Miscellanea, 

 containing a new genus of fossil Ufactridce, on the recent and 

 fossil KelliadcB (Lepton Lasea and Pythina J on some new pulmoniferce, 

 on a new phyllopodous crustacean, on the conchology of King George's 

 Sound, and on two new G aster opods from South Australia — 

 Trochocochelea and Mhalia. He has also issued from the Press a 



