6 THE VIOTORIAN NATURALIST. 
modify our opinions will teach as modesty of expression. But if we 
are true students of nature we shall never tire of listening to her 
teachings, for she will lead us into a veritable fairyland, and she will 
tell us wondrous tales. To her children nature is as Longfellow 
makes her in his poem on the birthday of Agassiz—an old nurse— 
and she sings to her children thus— 
Come, wander with me, she said, 
Into regions yet untrod, 
And read what is still unread 
In the manuscript of God. 
And he wandered away, away, 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe. 
And whenever the way seemed long, 
Or his heart began to fail, 
She would sing a more wonderful song, 
Or tell a more wonderful tale. 
The study of nature is no longer a hidden mystery, to be 
unveiled only to a few initiated ones. The days when the 
goddess was carefully hidden from the gaze of the common people, 
guarded by priests, jealous lest any save themselves should behold 
the Deity, have passed away. Isis has been unveiled, and all who 
will may, by living study, enter into the most secret recesses of the 
fane. Again, then, we affirm the aim of our Club is the 
popularisation and domestication of science. 
I ask, next, what are the facilities afforded for the study of 
natural science in this colony of ours? The wisdom of the 
founders of institutions in this young land has been shown by the 
liberality with which provision has been made for the study of art 
and science. Our public library, our picture gallery, our botanical 
gardens, zoological gardens, and museums are the pride of our city, 
and a wonder to those who remember that not a century has passed 
since one was ‘‘first to sail into a silent sea,” and barely 
fifty years since white men made a home where our stately city 
now stands. That these liberal provisions were made none too 
soon is evidenced by the fact that there is hardly a literary or a 
scientific society of the old land that does not find its counterpart 
here, and it is indeed to be hoped that Australia’s children may 
not only hold their own in the cricket field, not only fight side by 
side on Africa’s sands with England’s sturdiest, fired by a noble, 
if, perchance, a somewhat wild ambition, but also win their laurels 
in the arena of literature, science, and art. 
As I have already intimated, the first need of a student is books 
—books to guide him in the way he wants to travel. Of manuals 
