THE VtCTOKIAK NATURALIST 



the same, so that we may fairly hope t1iat before long the much desired 

 aid may be in the hands of our botanical students. The proof 

 sheets indicate that the fame of our goyernment botanist, the Baron 

 von Mueller, will suffer no diminution, but be rather enhanced by 

 so useful a work.* Having made many tours through the 

 country districts during the past year, over and over again I have 

 been asked for popular works dealing with Australian fauna and 

 Jlora, and I have had alas to answer that such were not in existence. f 

 With nur growing population, with the number of students of natui-al 

 scienci^ conrinunllv on the increase, surely this want ought now to 

 ba met. The Victorian Naturalist, the journal and magazine of 

 our Club, meets to a very limited extent, by publishing our papers, 

 this need, and its usefulness would be greatly increased if its members 

 would from time to time forward notes and observations bearing on 

 natural history. 



What we doubtless need is original work. Work, that by it$ 

 close application and patient research brings to light some fact that 

 shall help to elucidate some one or other of the mysteries of life. 

 To do this, attention must be concentrated. Studies must not be 

 too wide. We are too apt, I think, to want to know a little of 

 everything, rather than a few things well. 



Dr. Moloney, in his address to the Medical Society of Victoria, 

 seemed almost to deprecate specialism as far as medical practice is 

 concerned, and indicated that in his opinion specialism has not done 

 very much in the way of medical discovery. I, on the other hand, 

 want, so far as our particular work is concerned, to emphasize the 

 need of specialism, but then, I daresay that the President of the 

 Medical Society and myself would use the term in a somewhat 

 different sense. 



The study of nature should broaden our views, extend the range 

 of our mental vision, save us from the narrowing influences of the 

 daily world work by which we are so apt to get all our interests and 

 sympathies dwarfed. We read the story of the rocks, and there 

 comes to our vision a new world in the old. Quaint, strange forms 

 of animal and vegetable life, the like of which nightmare dreams had 

 not before revealed. World after world is evolved to our astonished 

 gaze. Ov under the microscope thousands of forms, some of grand 

 beauty, some of strange hideousness, are born, live, grow, change, 

 die beneath our never wearied eyes. Or other worlds are investigated, 

 fai" off suns are measured, their orbits traced, their constituents analysed 

 by spectroscope. Now all this must help, after the hard day's work 

 is over, to widen thought and enlarge sympathy, to get a man away 



*Since this address was written, one part of the Dichotomous Key has 

 been received from Haron Mueller. 



f Perhaps " the native plauts of Victoria, succinctly definecl by Baron von 

 Mueller,"' should here have been mentioned, but the first part has as yet 

 only been published. 



