XXXVIII. 
arrangements were made for carrying on affairs; and encouraged by the sympathy 
which the disastrous event evoked on all sides, and by the measure of success so far 
attained by the Society, of which the six complete volumes of Proceedings already 
issued were tangible proof, Sir William and his colleagues set courageously to work 
at what might be called his third attempt to set an Australian Biological Society 
permanently on its feet. 
For some time the homeless Society was allowed by the courtesy of the Trustees 
to hold its scientific meetings in the Board Room of the Public Library, a room in a 
house in Hunter Street serving as an office ; but a few months later Sir William in 
his private capacity rented a centrally situated and commodious house in Phillip 
Street, which he fitted up, and which thereupon without any formal announcement 
or ceremony the Society proceeded to occupy, and continued to do so with great 
comfort for a period of more than two years. In the meantime Sir William in an 
equally unostentatious manner had taken in hand the matter of replacing the library, 
and by his supplementing the effort which the Society itself made in this direction by 
the initiation of a special fund, the new library soon began to assume something like 
the proportions of that which had been destroyed. 
Meanwhile the question of a permanent home for the Society had been mooted 
and discussed, and Sir William offered that if a city site could be secured he himself 
would bear the cost of the erection of a suitable building. Several sites were 
inspected, but the current rates of purchase demanded for centrally situated land 
were so enormously high, the sum of £5000 being asked for the small available area 
that appeared most suitable, that it at once became evident that without becoming 
hopelessly involved in debt the Society—which never at any time in its history has 
had a membership of two hundred effective members, and a Society which has little 
in the way of inducements to offer to any but those possessed with an active interest 
in, or a taste for, natural history, or with a desire to help in fostering any intellectual 
pursuit, not it must be confessed a very large proportion of a young community— 
could not but come to the conclusion that its resources were unequal to the strain of 
the contemplated purchase. Sir William thereupon came to the rescue with an offer 
of both land and house at Elizabeth Bay ; an offer which the Council could not but 
gratefully accept. arly in 1885 under Sir William’s directions the project was put 
in hand, and in October of that year the building was completed. The land, which 
with the building were subsequently conveyed to the Society by deed of gift, has a 
frontage of 179 feet to Ithaca Road, formerly Bay Street, by a depth of 120 feet 
fronting Billyard Avenue : it is but a few yards from the water’s edge of Elizabeth 
Bay, and in fact on the north side the boundary would almost coincide with the old 
high-water mark before the erection of the present sea-wall and the resumption of a 
small intervening area. It is part of the fine old garden to the attractions of which 
