LECTURE II. 

 BIOLOGY IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE. 



By W. B. BENHAM, M.A., D.Sc , F.R.S., F.Z.S. (Professor of Biology at the 

 University of Otago). 



Delivered in the School of Music, Nelson, on May 30th, 1918. 



I have to thank the Cawthron ,Trustees for doing 

 me the honour of inviting me to deliver the annual Cawthron Lecture 

 this evening. I esteem it a high compliment, the more so as we 

 hope that the Cawthron Lecture will continue to be an annual event 

 ir Nelson, and that the lecturer will always be chosen as being of 

 some note in his special profession. 



In the Old Country there are many such foundations 

 providing an annual .lecture in 1 order to perpetuate the 

 memory of a man who has by his generosity or his 

 researches aided or advanced science or literature, and men of note 

 in all walks of life literary men, scientific men, statesmen, church- 

 men, and others are invited to do honour to his memory. I recall 

 the Hunterian Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons in memory 

 of that most distinguished anatomist, John Hunter, who in the 

 Eighteenth Century commenced the formation of that great museum 

 of comparative anatomy; the Hibbert Lectures; the Gifford Lectures, 

 at which many notable men have spoken ; the Romanest and the 

 Royle at Oxford ; the Huxley Lectures, and a dozen others. 



Those of us who are interested in the future of the Cawthron 

 Institute for Scientific Reasearch hope that, within the limits set 

 by our geographical situation, eminent men not scientists only 

 will be invited to commemorate the benefactions of the late Mr 

 Thomas Cawthron. 



The citizens of Nelson should be, and I have no doubt are, proud 

 of having had dwelling among them so generous and yet so modest a 

 man as Mr Cawthron. Although, as I understand, he lived a 

 retired and quiet life, taking no share in public matters, yet he did 

 many a kindly action in the quietest way, helping financially and 

 otherwise those of whose difficulties or distress he heard ; and this he 

 did in so unobtrusive a fashion that one may almost say that his left 

 hand knew not what his right hand gave. 



But, as we all know, he also gave large sums of money towards the 

 improvement and beautificatipn of this city. To him you owe the 

 fine organ in this hall ; to him the handsome steps which form so 

 grand an approach to your Cathedral itself to be replaced some day, 

 by an edifice more in keeping with the progress of the city. You 



tThus the Right Hon. H. Asquith, M.P., is to give the Romanes Lecture in 

 1918, on "Some Aspects of the Victorian Age" a leading statesman is to com- 

 memorate the work of Romanes, who was a distinguished evolutionist. 



