XLII. 
“ My position as President of this Society gives me no right to thrust my advice upon you, but I am 
desirous of giving assistance, in so far as my judgment approves, in contributing to the usefulness of the 
Society, and I claim to know to some extent how that can be best accomplished. J am convinced that we 
cannot do better in the present state of natural history in Australia than confine our attention to observing, 
cataloguing, and describing. . . . The reason why I recommend descriptive catalogues is because they 
are not only what are most required (our knowledge of the Australian Fauna [as a whole] being still very 
limited), but because any generalisation of, or deductions from, what we do know cannot be of much value 
with our present imperfect knowledge. . . . There is no better exercise for the student than the 
describing of new species, and there is certainly no better way of making himself useful to the workers in 
other spheres of natural history who have not the same opportunities of observation and comparison.” 
In this spirit his attention at first, as we have seen, was given wholly to 
entomology. The acquisitions in the department of general entomology obtained 
during the voyage of the Chevert, though numerous and a most valuable addition to 
the Macleay Collection, did not imclude many representatives of the groups of 
Coleoptera in which he was particularly interested, for he says—‘“ the Coleoptera 
were upon the whole rare and difficult to get, though we managed to scrape together 
several thousand specimens,” referable chiefly to the Longicorniza and Curculionide. 
The collection of lower vertebrates, especially of fishes, was, however, important. 
Of the fishes particularly he says that the collection was ‘‘of a most varied and 
interesting character, exceeding in point of numbers the collections made in those 
seas on any previous occasion,” over one thousand specimens having been preserved. 
The desire to see his collections systematically worked up, and the wider interest in 
general zoology arising out of the experiences of the previous year (1874), decided 
Sir William, in the absence of any resident naturalist interested in these groups, to 
undertake the task himself, in the case of the fishes with the collaboration of the late 
Dr. H. G. Alleyne, of which the Teleostean forms were dealt with in two papers in 
Vol. I. of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society. 
On the appointment of an ichthyologist in 1884 to the scientific staff of the 
Australian Museum, Sir William almost relinquished the study of vertebrates, and 
again devoted himself chiefly to entomology for the rest of his working days. In 
the meantime the interest aroused especially by the study of the Chevert material 
had led him subsequently to acquire and deal with important collections of fishes and 
snakes from various parts of Australia, and of fishes from the Solomon Islands and 
New Guinea ; and in 1880 to commence a “ Descriptive Catalogue of the Fishes of 
Australia,”* founded upon Dr. Giinther’s well-known British Museum Catalogue, 
which, from its comprehensive nature and the increased knowledge which its very 
publication had been largely instrumental in bringing about, had rendered possible 
the compilation of a work less bulky and costly, and more suited to the present day 
* Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. Vols. V., VI., and with a Supplement in Vol. IX. 
These papers were in 1884 re-issued as a separate publication. 
