PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION D. $3 
furnished with circulars of information, in which their atten- 
tion was particularly drawn to the animals and plants of very 
special interest indigenous to the countries they expected to visit. 
For every one of these expeditions there is, at least, an officially- 
published narrative, and usually a great deal more in the shape 
of scientific results. There is no difficulty therefore in following 
the movements of the collectors, and in understanding in what 
localities and under what circumstances the collecting was done. 
As the work of the French collectors—Labillardiére, Péron 
and Lesueur, Quoy and Gaimard, Dumont d’Urville, Duperrey, 
Lesson and Garnot, Busseuil and Eydoux—is summarised in the 
latter part of this address, no further mention need here be 
made of them. 
The characteristics of the collecting during the Pre-Victorian 
Era are now intelligible. The exhaustive and representative 
general collecting should obviously have been the special work 
of resident British responsible collectors, ready to utilise new 
settlements, new colonies, coast surveys, and inland explorations 
as means to that end. Preferably, too, such collecting should have 
been carried on in the interests of the British National Museum. 
Unfortunately, the zoologists failed to profit by the example 
set by the botanists ; and the collecting was accordingly left to 
private enterprise, and to whomsoever would undertake it. But, 
in the absence of organisation and co-operation, the task was 
too stupendous for merely private enterprise. The result was 
that the work got out of hand, and that at too early a stage 
it became international in character. The final result is not a 
little curious. Though Australia has now been colonised for 
more than a century, and though during that time an enormous 
amount of energy has been devoted to collecting the fauna, it 
is still a fact that only two great groups have ever been pro- 
perly collected. To John Gould is due the credit of rescuing the 
study of Australian mammals and birds from the international 
complications in which, like that of all the other great groups 
which attracted notice in the old days, it was steadily becoming 
involved. This great achievement he accomplished in the 
capacity of a private individual, and at his own risk, by organi- 
sation and persistent effort. His collections of mammals and 
birds were not only very fairly exhaustive and representative 
for the portion of Australia accessible to the traveller in his 
day, but they included the most complete Australian series, the 
collections richest in types, ever brought together by a single 
individual, and monographed as collections in self-contained 
publications. 
Gould estimated the number of Australian birds described 
up to the time of his departure for Australia at about 300 
species. The estimated number given in his Introduction (1848) 
is “upwards of 600 species,” his collection comprising “ 600 
F2 
