XXIV PKOCEEDINGS, NOVEMBER. 



undertaking is as yet only in its infancy, but it is progressing most satis- 

 factorily. It already has a large daily altendance, and it fulfils for 

 the North of the Island the same functions that the Hobart Museum 

 and Art Gallery are fulfilling for the South. 



In technical education, a matter in which we, as a Society, are 

 greatly interested, immense strides have been made during the time I 

 have been your President. There are technical schools now in operation 

 in Hobart, in Launceston, and even in some of the smaller towns in the 

 island, and I understand that the fine Technical School building ia 

 Hobart, of which I laid the foundation-stone so recently as July 10, 

 1889, has now so large an attendance that its accommodation is seriously 

 taxed. A separate department has been formed to deal with agricul- 

 tural education, and we have now an Agricultural Council disseminatinsj 

 knowledge respecting agriculture in all its branches, a function which 

 the expeiience of this Society shows to be so necessary for the progress 

 and well-being of this dominant industry. The possibilities of expan- 

 sion in this industry are great, but an essential condition of such 

 expansi'u, in profitable directions, is a wider knowledge of the laws 

 which Nature has established, and of their operation and application 

 to our needs. Such knowledge it is the main function of the Agri- 

 cultural Council to disseminate in our midst, and its work in this 

 direction has the heartiest sympathy of our Society. 



During the same period, to), tie University of Tasmania has been 

 founded, and although it is early yet to speak of what it has done, it 

 has great days before it. The gentlemen charged with its adminis- 

 tration seem to me to be going the right way to work. They are fully 

 alive to the fact that you must walk before you can run, and that you 

 do not require a miniature Oxford or Cambridge in Tasmania. They 

 know that science teaching must occupy a more prominent place in their 

 curriculum than it does in the curriculum of these ancient seats of learn- 

 ing, and they will not be deterred from utilising their University to 

 ■nieet the wants of the community by any consideration that in so 

 doina: they may be departing somewhat from the functions of the 

 old Universities at Home. But I am glid to see indications of a de- 

 termination on their part that their standard shall be high. In this 

 they are right and wise. The time must come when Hobart will be a 

 great educational centre of a united Australia, ani the higher the 

 standard in Tasmania is known to be, the so ner will its University 

 attract the youth from the other colonies, who will get at its seat of 

 learning an education and training at least equal to that their owii 

 Universities afford, while at the same time they will be laying in a 

 store of health and vigour, which, in the battle of life, is second only in 

 importance to education itself. 



In addition to all these new agencies working steadily and con- 

 tinuously in the direction of educational progress, two events have 

 occurred during my term of office whose influence has been strongly 

 in the same direction. I refer to the Exhibition at Launceston, so 

 successfully managed, which must have had a great effect in open- 

 ing and enlarging the minds of the many thousands of our people who 

 visited it, and to the meeting of the Australasian Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, held in this city in January last. I can 

 see throughout the country evidence of the healthy stimulus caused by 

 that gathering, and it is to me personally, having had the honour of 

 being its president, a matter of the utmost satisfaction that the meeting 

 was an undoubted success. Out ot this meeting sprang the Australa- 

 sian Home Reading Union, which I believe will, in conjunction with 

 our numerous literary and debating societies, exercise a continuous, and, 

 I hope, an ever-increasing influence in developing a taste for instructive 

 reading among our people, '^and in directing home study to definite ends. 



