INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 19 
particularly so in Australia. Our biologists might devise some 
feasible plan, to advance this subject from year to year at the 
Association’s meeting. 
Capt. Engelhardt Jérgensen’s singular enterprise, now under 
progress, to sail in a lifeboat around the world, arose from ideas 
encouraged and matured in this metropolis. The boat is decked, 
divided into water-tight compartments, unsinkable, readily port- 
able, never permanently upset, easily set going in accident, and 
carries drinking water as ballast ; it has stood a furious sea near 
the Bay of Biscay. We may thus expect the venturesome 
mariner with his companion, to arrive in due time, whereby a 
deed will be accomplished as daring and unique, as that of his 
famous countryman, who lately crossed the south of Greenland. 
Dr. Nansen is seemingly to receive munificent support from a 
compatriot for an effort to approach by land the North-Pole 
from Greenland ; this will likely prove the safest route, notwith- 
standing immense hindrances, because on that line will at all 
events be mostly a firm footing, and perhaps some game. If the 
best is made of a full aretic summer with sailing sleighs, it 
would be shown, to some extent at least, whether Greenland 
extends in terrestrial continuity still much further than 83° N., 
while chances likely would accrue of wide views onward from 
any high elevation. As one likely result, the northern limits 
- of Greenland would at least be determined. At all events, it 
has now been shown, that arctic altitudes up to 10,000 feet are 
traversable. 
Instances are too rare, considering the enormous private 
wealth accumulated in innumerable cases, of calling explorers 
into the field, such as in our days brought Agassiz to the 
Amazon-river, Stanley, “the bravest of the brave” among 
geographers, to Central Africa, Nordenskiold along the whole 
coast of North Asia. 
But Australia is not without its Maecenates! Of this you will 
be reminded in the Wilson-Hall, in the Clarke and Wyselaskie 
Institutions, connected with the Melbourne University, while in 
the eldest city of Australia the main seat of science was endowed 
by Challis’s princely munificence, and the Linnean Society is 
sustained largely in a permanent home by the foremost of 
Australian zoologists. In the metropolis, west of us, the 
University owes some of its principal ramifications to the 
Hughes and Elder bestowals. Ormond College and that of the 
Artisans here tell their own tale, whereas a statue at the largest 
library in the Southern Hemisphere commemorates what well 
directed energy and untiring perseverance can individually bring 
about. But let us think also of the liberal support, accorded by 
successive enlightened Ministries and Parliaments, to early and 
continued studies, without which high-mindedness many researches 
here could not have reached their present extent. 
B2 
