Anniversary Address. 5 



To devise a remedy for tliis inadaquate representation of 

 the state of science in our pages, may not be eas}'^, hut it 

 will at any rate prove salutary to trace its causes. 



There is in Victoria, I need hardly remind you, no class 

 of noblemen and gentlemen, as at home, devoting ample 

 fortunes to the cultivation of such scientific piu'suits as please 

 them, and possessing abundant leisure to communicate their 

 discoveries to one another. 



It is a melancholy fact, though one almost incidental to 

 the paucity of our population and the newness of our 

 society, that neither literary nor scientific teaching will, 

 except in connection with posts of public emolument, enable 

 even the most talented to earn a livelihood in this country. 

 I need not cite instances ; the experience of everybody will 

 supply not a few. Hence it so happens that our leading scien- 

 tific men have nearly all of them professional duties of more 

 or less urgency to perform, and but little time at their dis- 

 posal for the composition of papers not absolutely required by 

 the State at their hands. 



So far from blaming them for this, we are bound to feel 

 the deepest obligation to them for transferring their labors 

 to our shores. There is scarcely one of them who would not 

 have obtained higher honors if not larger emoluments in the 

 Old World, and who does not therefore remain to explore the 

 wide field opened at the Antipodes from pure love of science. 



It is natiu'al that under such circumstances gentlemen 

 should, when devoting their spare hours to descril^e the result 

 of their observations, seek to influence as large a body of 

 scientific readers as possible, and that they should, therefore, 

 seldom address themselves to this Society, where the number 

 of members who have turned their attention to any particular 

 branch of knowledge is necessarily extremely limited. Hitherto, 

 in fact, this paucity of members has constituted the great 



