WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



First Meeting : 6th June, 1S90. 



C. Hulke, F.C.S., President, in the chair. 



New Member. — W. AI. Beetham. 



1. Address by the President. 



Abstkact. 

 yix. Hulke selected a most interesting subject for his address — viz., 

 a review of the inventions and scientific discoveries of the half-century 

 that had elapsed since the foundation of the colony. He said that no 

 period in the world's history had been so prolific in inventions and dis- 

 coveries as those fifty years. The advantages accruing from those inven- 

 tions, the benefits resulting from the discoveries — so greatly beyond the 

 expectations of those that made them that had any one at the time pre- 

 dicted such results he would have been deemed mad — we too often thank- 

 lessly and thoughtlessly enjoyed. The fruit of many an invention and 

 many a discovery had often been prevented from ripening by the chill 

 blasts of ridicule and prejudice, and we ought therefore not to criticize 

 new theories too severely, for there was a great deal that we should like 

 to know about our world, and too severe criticisms might delay the ac- 

 quisition of that knowledge. He thought that the great progress which 

 had been made in art and in science was due to the increased facilities for 

 intercourse afiorded by the development of the steam-engine, which he 

 tracea from the time of Dr. Papin, through James Watt's patents of 17G9 

 and 17S1, to Fulton's successful trip in the " Clermont " on the Hudson, 

 in 1807, and finally to the establishment of the Cuuard Line between 

 Liverpool and New York, in 1840, the same year in which the English 

 " penny post " was introduced. The latter was the greatest postal reform 

 that had ever been introduced into any nation, and when we read of the 

 opposition shown to the demand for a lower rate of ocean postage we 

 should not forget the intense opposition offered by the English postal 

 authorities to Rowland Hill's proposed scheme. Seldom had a nation 

 the right to claim a great invention as its own : in one a thought had 

 been uttered, in another that thought had been acted upon and partially 

 developed, while in a third it had been rendered practically useful. The 

 more frequent the repetition of such a course, the greater the benefit con- 

 ferred upon mankind ; and nothing could be so conducive to that repeti- 

 tion as the fi"ee interchange of ideas, which had been so greatly promoted, 

 if not actually called into existence, by the postal reform he had spoken 

 of. It was that rapid exchange of thought, that free communion between 

 minds, that throwing-open the storehouses of genius and intellect, to 

 which might be ascribed the great progress made in ever}- department of 

 art and science. Neither the telegraph nor photography would have at- 

 tained their present perfection had their development been contlned to 

 <?ome secluded valley or to the secret chamber of some guild. Eeferring 

 to that meaningless expression "the good old times," he contrasted the 



