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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WORK AND WORKERS 

 OF THE TASMANIAN SOCIETY AND THE ROYAL 

 SOCIETY OF TASMANLA., FROM THE YEAR 1840 

 TO THE CLOSE OF 1900. 



By Alex. Morton, 

 Secretary Royal Society of Tasmania. 



When the Scientific History of Australasia shall come to 

 be written, it will be seen how large a share Tasmania has 

 taken in the world of Science, and how valuable have been 

 her contributions to its knowledge. Very early in the history 

 of the British Settlement in Tasmania, a systematic attempt 

 was made to classify its Flora, with the special object of 

 discovering what edible roots or fruits were to be obtained ; 

 and this, though perhaps undertaken with a view rather to 

 the utilitarian than the purely scientific results, was of ubc 

 to the investigators who followed in the same line. 



The scattered work of individual observers was first 

 focussed in a Society, founded by Sir John Franklin in 1841, 

 which was called at first the Philosophical, and soon after- 

 wards the Tasmanian Society. The meetings were held at 

 Oovernment House, then the most central place in the city, 

 and the roll of names on its list of members contained such 

 names as Sturt, Leichhardt, Sir Thomas Mitchell, Captains 

 Ross and Crozier, and many others well know^n to fame. In 

 the first volume of proceedings I find the name of Dr. (now 

 Sir) James Agnew, with Port Phillip as his address. Ever 

 since then his name has been identified with the work of 

 scientific societies in Hobart, and his liberality in connection 

 with them is too well known for me to do more than allude 

 to it here in passing. 



The four departments of Zoology, Botany, Geology, and 

 Meteorology, were the first to receive the attention of the 

 Society, while Geography, in the face of the new discoveries 

 being maae daily, soon claimed a large share of attention. 



The first Journal, published in 1843, has compressed in its 

 pages so much that has gone to the making of history, as to 

 make one wonder if the times seemed as remarkable to those 

 who lived in them, as they do to us now. 



John Gould, then in Sydney preparing for his great work 

 on the " Birds of Australia," contributed a paper on the 

 habits of the brush turkey, which had been studied, appa- 

 rently to little effect, before he turned his attention to its 

 ■classification. 



