INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 26 



professors and others whose business it is, and if they make 

 any discoveries of benefit to us we will avail ourselves of 

 them ; but no g-ood can arise from gatherings like these." 

 To the ill 1 would say, " We, the bulk of the Members of 

 this Association, although we may not ourselves have done 

 any scientific work, are deejsly interested in the progress and 

 advancement of science, and we believe that we can do some- 

 thing to help this forward." As regards the admission of 

 women as members of these Associations, it cannot be gainsaid 

 that, in many directions, the cause of science has benefited in 

 the past from the intellect of women being brought to bear 

 upon it, and I believe that it will still receive more benefit 

 in the future ; while I most emphatically endorse the opinion 

 of the President of the British Association in 1849, at which 

 ladies were first admitted as associates, that " man cannot 

 ascend in the scale of intellectual power unless woman rises 

 with him." This Association brings together those who are 

 interested in scientific pursuits with the twofold object — first, 

 of systematising scientific inquiry; and, second, of obtaining 

 a greater degree of public attention to the objects of science. 

 Tlie first is the work of men of science pure and simple ; the 

 second affords work for all of us. This gathering, I am 

 happy to say, includes a large number of scientific men, and 

 I trust that their deliberations on this occasion will appreciably 

 tend towards systematising inquiry, particularly throughout 

 the Australasian Colonies. When men are thus brought 

 together who are interested in the same scientific pursuits, but 

 who necessarily, for the most part, work alone, a free inter- 

 change of ideas among them is promoted, and a healthy 

 vitality and emulation is aroused and stimulated ; gaps in 

 reasoning are supplied, — blanks in observation are filled in, — 

 crude theories are dissipated, — and truth emerges from the 

 crucible of wider experience, and a full discussion by free 

 and vigorous minds. Then, again, some researches can only 

 be successfully carried out by co-operation, and gatherings 

 of this sort afford opportunities for organising committees for 

 the prosecution of such researches. Most of us, however, who 

 are assembled here this evening fall, as I have said, into 

 the category of those who, although not ourselves workers in 

 science, are, nevertheless, deeply impressed by the importance 

 and necessity of its advancement, and who follow, so far as 

 we are able to do so, its progress and triumphs with interest 

 and delight. On us devolves the duty of doing all in our 

 power to obtain more general and wider attention to its 



