INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 3 
some European standard, to be engaged actively in pursuits of 
discovery with a strict scientific bearmg, I feel sure to express 
the feelings of all, whom professional positions or amateur-incli- 
nation bring together on the path of knowledge, when I affirm, 
that the Association joyously and gratefully welcomes all who 
will cheer us in our aspirations, will listen to our discussions, 
and will support us by that moral influence, which every educated 
and thoughtful layman can bring to bear. Ours is a kind of 
scientific federation full of soul. Every one can help. The 
wide scope of the Association thus being rendered patent, 
as well as the ease of access, it might next be asked by 
the uninitiated, what are the more direct objects, what the 
more immediate tendencies, what the final destinations of this 
organisation, spread now also to a distant corner of the globe 
like ours? As you might foretell, we accept on Australian soil 
this movement—started by an illustrious sage of Edinburgh—in 
all its bearings, hopes and responsibilities, with perhaps this one 
preference, that, while we endeavour to follow the cosmopolitan 
course, as adopted in the northern world, we would cherish some 
predilection for maintaining a command over the fields of 
indigenous work in these far southern regions, without any wish 
however of monopoly, but with that patriotic sense, becoming to 
us as residents in this particular portion of the British Empire. 
Irrespective of carrying on original research, worthy of a country 
of juvenile freshness, it is our duty more especially, to instil the 
flow of information from so manifold sources near us in such 
a manner, that new growth for further developments may 
arise through that limpid course in all possible directions. 
We should and could arouse anew aiso all those, who may 
slacken, by example and by new inspirations. You can carry 
a spirit of research into the family-homes; you will leave 
in many an hospitable house, which opens its doors in a 
year of choice to illustrious participators of these meetings, 
many reminiscences not less pleasurable than profitable through 
life. J shall not speak here of the living among leaders in 
progressive knowledge, of those who yet are shining forth at the 
British Association also; but I would wish to pay a word of 
homage to the dead—to those, whom many of you have still met, 
and on whose busts at solemn moments we would wish, if even in 
thought only and passive pensiveness, to place also here a laurel 
wreath. Thus, among Britons, such names come before our 
memory as those of J. Herschel, James Ross, Faraday, McClure, 
Sabine, W. Hooker, Lindley, Brewster, Wheatstone, Murchison, 
Darwin, Speke, Carpenter, Lyell, Brodie, Gould, Livingstone, 
Sedgwick, Berkeley, G. Bentham, Simpson, Proctor and a host 
of other luminaries, reminding us likewise of an early Melbourne 
University professor, who at a meeting of the British Associa- 
tion about the middle of the century, was one of its principal 
AQ 
