PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS-—SECTION D. 13 
with a fund of experience and systematised knowledge en y 
accumulated and to hand. 
After Cook’s visit in 1770 there was to be no further com- 
munication with the mainland of Australia until the first at- 
tempt at colonisation eighteen years afterwards. This lengthy 
interval seemed to promise that when colonisation actually 
began, the scientific results of Cook’s voyages would have been - 
published, and be available for the guidance of such of the 
first settlers as were interested in natural history; as well as 
for zoologists desirous of investigating the fauna. 
After some years of failing “health, Linnzus died in 1778, 
and shortly afterwards, by Sir J. E. Smith’s acquisition of the 
Linnean collections and library, England had become “in a 
sense his heir.” On 26th January, 1788, Captain Phillip hoisted 
the British flag at the head of Sydney Cove, and exactly one 
month later ( 26th February), the inaugural meeting of the 
Linnean Society of London was held. What could seem more hope- 
ful, more promising than this, that the foundation of the oldest 
existing Enelish scientific society which has always especially 
concerned itself with biology, should be concurrent with the first 
attempt at the colonisation of Austraha? It seems all the more 
opportune because, as has already been said, though there were 
some favourable conditions and circumstances attending the 
scientific discovery of the Australian fauna and flora, there were 
also some drawbacks. There could not be said to be any 
national interest in the biological aspect of Cook’s First Voyage. 
The Royal Society was very much interested in the astronomical 
_ prospects of the expedition, but could not be said to take any 
particular interest in any prospective biological developments. 
The British Museum had been established for some time, but 
the Natural History Branch was then, and for long afterwards, 
in abject subjection to the Library, “ under a system of govern- 
ment,” to quote the words of a writer of a century later, “* that 
has made the state of our national natural history collections 
at Bloomsbury so long a bye-word amongst naturalists.” Lastly, 
there was no Chair of Zoology at either of the oreat English 
Universities for. considerably more than half a century after 
this time. The hopeful set-off to all this, however, was the 
existence of Sir Joseph Banks. For the future prospects of a 
knowledge of the Australian flora this was simply everything. 
That it counted for so very much less in faunistic matters was 
not due to Sir Joseph’s indifference to the claims of the fauna 
for recognition, but to over-ruline circumstances. The dif- 
ference, however, is more than the difference between success 
and indifferent success. It is the difference between success and 
something akin to failure when there was not, and could not be, 
any “next time.” 
We may now turn from the ideal to the real. Almost midway 
