Section D. 

 BIOLOGY. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT 

 C. W. DE VIS, M.A., 



Brisbane. 



LIFE. 



By a custom which has risen almost to the dignity of a law, the 

 President of a section is not at liberty to invite his colleagues to 

 proceed to business until he has discharged a preliminary duty ; 

 and how to perform that duty in the most useful manner has 

 doubtless been in all cases a matter of serious thought with those 

 to whom it has been entrusted. If we share the opinion of many 

 who think that the tendency of all official duties appointed to be 

 done on behalf of this and kincired associations is necessarily 

 determined by that peculiar mode of advancing Science which is 

 prescribed by their constitution, we shall conclude that loyalty 

 enjoins us to keep steadily in view the main reason which induced 

 the founders of associations of the kind to adopt a mode of pro- 

 cedure so entirely foreign to the habits of all other bodies having 

 the same excuse for existence. Sedentary science became loco- 

 motive, not chiefly to enable its agents and friends to assemble 

 together periodically in response to distant invitation, though the 

 personal and corporate benefits arising from mutual intercourse 

 and extended experience are obvious and manifold, but to heighten 

 the scientific level of general intelligence in whichever of its chief 

 centres they might happen to meet. The expediency of bringing 

 the outside world of thought into more intimate relation with 

 Science dictates our peripatetic policy, as clearly as the need of 

 instructing the farmer in his art defines that of similar associations 

 for the advancement of agriculture. It is by raising the spirit of 

 emulation that each travelling body seeks to compass its purpose, 

 but in our case there is a prcAaous requirement which does not 

 exist in the other. A profound sense of the value of soil culture 

 is almost instinctively confessed by the rudest farm laborer ; our 

 estimate of the worth of Science culture is more exposed to cavil 



