March 13, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



147 



progress in scientific thought, feel that a mere recital of the 

 achievemenls during their previous term is sufficient to command 

 interest : but in the colonies most of us are cut off from personal 

 coBverse with the leading minds by whom the scientific afflatus 

 is communicated ; and, in our suspense for the tardy arrival of the 

 official publications of the societies, we have to feed our minds 

 with science from periodical literature. But even in this respect 

 my own current education is very defective, as I reside in the 

 capital city of New Zealand, which has no college with a profes- 

 sional staff whose duty, pleasure, and interest it is to maintain 

 themselves on a level with the difiEerent branches of knovvledge 

 they represent. I therefore decided, that, instead of endeavoring 

 to review what had been done in the way of scientific progress, 

 even in Australasia, it would be better to confine my remarks to 

 New Zealand ; the more so, that this is the first occasion that there 

 has been a gathering of what must, to some extent, be considered 

 to be an outside audience for the colony. 



To endeavor to describe, even briefly, the progress made in the 

 science of a new country, is, however, almost like writing its 

 minute history. Every step in its reclamation from a wild state 

 of nature has depended on the application of scientific knowledge, 

 and the reason for the rapid advance made' in these colonies is 

 chiefly to be attributed to their having had the advantage of all 

 modern resources ready to hand. As in most other matters in 

 New Zealand, there is a sharp line dividing the progress into two 

 distinct periods, — the first before, and the second after, the for- 

 mation of the colony in 1840. With reference to the former 

 period, it is not requisite that much should be said on this occa- 

 sion. From the time of Capt. Cook's voyages, owing to his attrac- 

 tive narrative, Ni w Zealand acquired intense inter.^st for natu- 

 ralists. His descriptions of the country and its productions, seeing 

 that he only gathered them from a few places where he landed on 

 the coast, are singularly accurate; but I think rather too much is 

 sometimes endeavored to be proved from the negative evidence of 

 his not having observed certain objects. As an instance, it has 

 been asserted, that, if any of the many forms of the moa still 

 survived, Capt. Cook must have been informed of the fact. Yet 

 we find that he lay for weeks in Queen Charlotte Sound and in 

 Dusky Sound, where all night long the cry of the kiwi must have 

 been heard, just as now; and that he also obtained and took home 

 mats and other articles of native manufacture, trimmed with 

 kiwis' skins; and that most likely the mouse-colored qu&,druped 

 which was seen at Dusky Sound by his men when clearing the 

 bush was only a gray kiwi; and yet the discovery of this interest- 

 ing bird was not made till forty years after Cook's visit. As a 

 scientific geographer, Capt. Cook stands unrivalled, considering 

 the appliances at his disposal. His longitudes of New Zealand 

 aie wonderfully accurate, especially those computed from what he 

 called his "rated watches," the first type of the modern marine 

 chronometer, which he was almost the first navigator to use. The 

 result of a recent measurement of the meridian difference from 

 Greenwich by magnetic signals is only two geographical miles 

 east of Capt. Cook's longitude. He also observed the variation 

 and dip of the magnetic needle; and from his record it would ap- 

 pear, that, during the hundred years which elapsed up to the time 

 of the "Challenger's" visit, the south-seeking end of the needle 

 has changed its position 3^^° westward, and inclines li" more 

 towards the south magnetic pole. Capt. Cook also recorded an 

 interesting fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not been since 

 repeated or verified in New Zealand. He found that the pendu- 

 lum of his astronomical clock, the length of which had been ad- 

 justed to swing true seconds at Greenwich, lost at the rate of 

 forty seconds daily at S'nip Cove, in Queen Charlotte Sound. 

 This is, I believe, an indication of a greater loss of the attrac- 

 tion of gravity than would occm- in a corresponding north lati- 

 tude. 



The additions to our scientific knowledge of New Zealand, ac- 

 quired through the visits of the other exploring ships of early 

 navigators, the settlement of sealers and whalere on the coast, and 

 of pakeha Maoris in ttie interior, were all useful, but of too slight 

 a character to require special mention. The greatest additions to 

 science were made by the missionaries, who, in the work of 

 spreading Christianity among the natives, had the services of able 



and zealous men, who mastered the native dialects, reduced them 

 to a written language, collected and placed on record the tradi- 

 tional knowledge of the interesting Maori, and had among their 

 numbers some industrious naturalists, who never lost an oppor- 

 tunity of collecting natural objects. 



The history of how the country, under the mixed influences for 

 good and for evil which prevailed almost without government 

 control until 1840, gradually was ripened for the colonist, is 

 familiar to all. The new era may be said to have begun with 

 Dieffenbach, a naturalist who was employed by the New Zealand 

 Company. He travelled, and obtained much information, but did 

 not collect to any great extent, and, in fact, appears not to have 

 anticipated that much remained to be discovered : for his conclu- 

 sion is, that the smallness of the number of the species of animals 

 and plants then known — about one-tenth of our present lists — 

 was not due to want of acquaintance with the country, but to 

 paucity of life forms. The chief scientific value of his published 

 work is in the appendix, giving the first systematic list of the 

 fauna and flora of the country, the former being compiled by the 

 late Dr. Gray of the British Museum. The next great scientific 

 work done for New Zealand was the admiralty survey of the 

 coast-line, which is a perfect marvel of accurate topography, and 

 one of the greatest boons the colony has received from the mother 

 country. The enormous labor and expense which was incurred 

 on this survey at an early date in the history of the colony is a 

 substantial evidence of the confidence in its future development 

 and commercial requirements which animated the home govern- 

 ment. 



On the visit of the Austrian exploring ship "Novara'" to 

 Auckland in 1859, Von Hochstetter was left behind, at the request 

 of thq, government, to make a prolonged excursion to the North 

 Island and in Nelson ; and he it was who laid the foundation of 

 our knowledge of the stratigraphical geology of New Zealand. 

 Since then the work of scientific research has been chiefly the 

 result of State surveys, aided materially by the zeal of me^ibers 

 of the New Zealand Institute, and of late years by an increasing 

 band of young students, who are fast coming to the front under 

 the careful science training that is afforded by our university col- 

 leges. 



In the epoch of their development, the Australasian colonies 

 have been singularly fortunate. The period that applies to New 

 Zealand is contemporaneous with the reign of her Majesty, which 

 has been signalized by enormous strides in science. It has been 

 a period of gathering into working form immense stores of pre- 

 viously acquired observation and experiment, and of an escape of 

 the scientific mind from the trammels of superstition and hazy 

 speculation regarding what may be termed common things. 

 Laborious work had been done, and many grand generalizations had 

 been formerly arrived at in physical science ; but still, in the work 

 of bringing things to the test of actual experiment, investigators 

 were still bound by imperfect and feeble hypotheses and supposed 

 natural barriers among the sciences. But science is one and indi- 

 visible; and its subdivisions, such as physics, chemistry, biology, 

 are only matters of convenience for study. The methods are the 

 same in all, and their common object is the discovery of the great 

 laws of order under which this universe has been evoked by the 

 great supreme Power. 



The great fundamental advance during the last fifty years has 

 been the achievement of far-reaching generalizations, which have 

 provided the scientific worker with powerful weapons of research. 

 Thus the modern "atomic theory," with its new and clearer con- 

 ceptions of the intimate nature of the elements and their com- 

 pounds that constitute the earth and all that it supports, has given 

 rise to a new chemistry, in which the synthetical or building-up 

 method of proof is already working marvels in its application to 

 manufactures. It is, moreover, creating a growing belief that all 

 matter is one, and reviving the old idea that the inorganic ele- 

 mentary units are merely centres of motion specialized in a 

 homogeneous medium ; and that these units have been continued 

 on through time, but with such individual variations as give rise 

 to derivative groups, just as we find has been the ca.se in the field 

 of organic creations. The idea embodied in this speculation 

 likens the molecule to the vortex ring which Helmholtz found 



