88 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION D. 
THE BIOLOGISTS AND THEIR WORK. 
We have next to consider what scientific use European 
biologists made of their collections of Australian plants and 
animals. Looking at the matter from the Australian stand- 
point, and with the knowledge which succeeds the event, one 
can see that the biologists in question fall into several groups. 
The most effective work was done by the biologist who studied 
large collections which he had himself helped to accumulate, 
in the light of personal knowledge of Australia. But the earliest 
biologists would not, or could not, wait until they could deal 
with the fauna and flora from this standpoint. The consequence 
was that a beginning was made with collections of a less 
representative character. Leaving out of consideration the 
entomological work of Fabricius, up till the year 1804—\thirty- 
two years after the return of the “ Endeavour,” and sixteen 
years after the foundation of the first colony at Port Jackson 
—British zoologists practically had Australian faunistic work 
in their own hands. This early chapter in the history of what 
is known of the Australian fauna is, however, truly melancholy. 
It was not the study of collections, but the cataloguing of speci- 
mens in an antiquated and crude manner. In the year 1804, 
the Paris National Museum “was suddenly enriched by the 
most considerable accession in zoology and botany that it had 
ever received.” These were the magnificent collections secured 
by Péron and Lesueur, and their botanical colleague, Leschen- 
ault, the naturalists of Captain Baudin’s expedition; and they 
were rich in Australian material. The zoological portion of 
this great collection, either in its original form, or supplemented 
by the acquisitions obtained on similar expeditions of a later 
date, was studied, among others, by Géoffroy St. Hilaire, 
Lacépéde, Lamarck, Cuvier and Valenciennes, Duméril and 
Bibron, Desmarest, and other distinguished French naturalists, 
some of the members of the professorial staff of the Muséum 
National. The standpoint of these great naturalists to a large 
extent was that of the systematist in the Linnean sense—the 
propounder of a system of classification. 
The knowledge of the Australian flora began as good 
cataloguing, and then at a very early date in this century, and 
at one bound, it passed to the stage of an analytical study of a 
great flora under very favourable circumstances. The course 
of the knowledge of the fauna was more erratic and complicated. 
The indifferent cataloguer had much to do with it at first. The 
qualifications of the cataloguer subsequently improved in some 
respects, but were a long time reaching the standard of the 
thoroughly good all-round cataloguer. The systematist, who 
lacked personal knowledge of Australia, who was sometimes 
interested more in his system than in the fauna, and who 
