PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. XCI 



the total number of ships which visited our ports in 1911 was 

 7,781. Then, in agriculture, Professor Watt estimates that in 

 New South Wales alone, whereas the present value of the wheat 

 yield is about £6,000,000 a year, the existing area under culti- 

 vation is capable of having its yield increased by 50 per cent, by 

 more scientific farming, and the whole area may be increased about 

 tenfold, so that New South Wales in the future should produce 

 £90,000,000 where now she is producing £6,000,000. In Victoria, 

 too, the wheat yield can be greatly increased, and the area under 

 cultivation can be, perhaps, doubled. In South Australia, too, 

 the yield could be very much increased, and the yield in Westerji 

 Australia enormously increased ; and all this wheat-growing 

 industry is, of course, specially dependent on weather and weather 

 forecasts. 



It is surely up to us from every point of view to strenuously 

 support and continually enlarge the scope of the work of our 

 Meteorological Bureau. It is a service of which Australia has 

 every reason to be justly proud, for, at present, no less than 9i 

 per cent, of the forecasts come true, but though " much is taken, 

 much abides." It was said of old, "Let the consuls look to it 

 that the Republic take no harm," and it is to us, who should be 

 the leaders of scientific thought, that the people of Australasia has 

 a right to look to see to it that no harm comes to the State through 

 neglect of even the least of the sciences in the broadest sense of 

 the word science. We have only to make known our wants, and 

 to reasonably support their claims, and experience has shown 

 us that our Government and private citizens at once rally to our 

 support. But while arguments have just been quoted for sub- 

 sidizing science because science pays, the fact cannot to too 

 strongly emphasized that it is obviously not desire for pay, beyond 

 the irreducible minimum for satisfying simple needs, that sends 

 the scientific worker up the steep and narrow way of research. It 

 is the love of his work for its own sake and the glamour of the 

 unknown that constrain him. One may never overtake the vision, 

 but is not the glory of pursuing worth all the fardels of this 

 mortal life ! Lessing said that if God came to him with the 

 absolute truth in one hand and the pursuit of truth in the other, 

 and bade him choose which he would have, he would choose 

 the pursuit. Surely no true lover of knowledge should choose 

 otherwise to-day ! 



But are we soldiers of the army of science under the Southern 

 Cross really living up to our highest duties and ideals 1 Are not 

 we who dwell in ease and peace in a large land, where the scientific 

 harvest is plenteous and the labourers are few, in danger of 

 slackness in the doing of our daily work ? We cannot justly blame 



