XLIV. 
was possessed with a keen interest in bacteriology, and he regularly and eagerly 
watched the progress in this department of knowledge as chronicled in the European 
and other Journals. In the first of his two Presidential Addresses to the Linnean 
Society of New South Wales, as long ago as January, 1876, as he did again in his 
Inaugural Address at the opening of the Linnean Hall in 1885, he points out that the 
object of the Society, as laid down in its published Rules, was the cultivation and 
study of all branches of natural history, and he emphasises the fact of “what a vast 
field of inquiry and study is included under the term natural history, as understood 
in its true meaning, and as taught by the illustrious man whose name we have adopted 
for this Society.” While in his second Address in January, 1877, he says :— 
“Tt will not, therefore, be supposed that I in any way seek to disparage what has been done if I 
proceed to point out what we may do, or that I think the study of any branch of natural history undesir- 
able, because I may desire the field of enquiry to be widened. And there are a good many subjects to 
which I should like to see more attention paid. It has always seemed to me rather anomalous that a 
Society named after the most illustrious botanist the world has ever produced, should not have apparently 
a single working botanist among its members. I should like also to see more attention paid to the sciences 
of geology and paleontology. 
“ But there are some branches of biological science which have never yet occupied the attention of 
any of our contributors, and which are of more importance to mankind, and of more real interest to the 
man of science, than the study or contemplation of the most gorgeous birds, or the most perfect and 
beautiful flowers. I mean the study of the history, metamorphoses, and conditions of existence of those 
low forms of animal and vegetable life which are really the most formidable enemies of man, both in his 
person and property, and which are, I believe, only formidable because of our ignorance of their history. 
“There is an immense field open here for investigation, and I am most desirous that this very 
important branch of biological science should receive the attention it merits from the members of this 
Society. And I would recommend this line of inquiry more particularly to those members who belong to 
the noble profession of medicine, as by the nature of their education and their opportunities of observation, 
they are of all others the best qualified for such investigations, . . . and surely to the medical man 
the acquirement of a knowledge of the source and cause of disease must be a nobler object of ambition than 
the highest skill in the empirical treatment of symptoms.” 
His hopes of seeing the subjects of botany, geology, and palzeontology occupying 
the attention of the working members of the Society were, and not very long after- 
wards, amply gratified. The subject of bacteriology, however, still found a place in 
his thoughts, and in 1884 took practical shape by his anonymously presenting to the 
Society the sum of £100 to be offered as a prize for an essay “On the Life-history of 
the Bacillus of Typhoid Fever.” This, however, led to no satisfactory result, and 
after being re-offered the following year, also in vain, at his own request the sum 
mentioned was passed to the general revenue of the Society. Still later, by his 
action Dr. Katz, who had recently arrived in the colony, began a series of bacterio- 
logical investigations, the results of which were communicated to the Society, and 
which in 1888 were interrupted by the demand for the services of a bacteriologist in 
