10 New Zealand Institute. 
and of the affiliated Societies, the establishment of which it will encourage in 
all our chief centres of population. And here I must observe that the 
Government has been very fortunate in securing for this important office the 
proved ability and judgment, the wide experience, and the untiring energy 
of Dr. Hector, F.R.S. It is to him that we are mainly indebted for the 
valuable collections of art and science already accumulated in these halls ; 
and he will always be ready to give his advice and assistance in the forma- 
tion of Museums in our principal towns. Co-operation is the secret of 
success in all scientific pursuits; and the New Zealand Institute, while 
leaving its affiliated Societies unfettered in the performance of their separate 
functions, will publish their chief transactions on a uniform plan, thereby 
concentrating the information collected by local observers throughout the 
country, and providing for the preservation, in a permanent and accessible 
form, of the result of their labours. It should not be forgotten that the 
New Zealand Exhibition of 1865, held at Dunedin, was an effort in the same 
direction; and that, if we may judge from the reports, it appears to have 
been very successful in procuring much novel and accurate information 
respecting the natural resources of this colony. 
And now, gentlemen, I congratulate you on already possessing, in this 
Public Museum and Library, facilities for that moral and intellectual 
culture without which no advantages of genius or of wealth can confer 
personal happiness, and no political privileges can secure immunity from 
national decay. Lord Bacon, the prince of philosophers, * il gran Maestro 
di color che sanno"' in the modern, as Dante said of Aristotle in the ancient 
world, has pronounced that ^ Knowledge is power," and also that ^ Know- 
ledge is pleasure." So too, Milton, the prince of modern poets, has sung,— 
w charming is Divine Philosophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute 
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns.* 
Still, let me remind you that the main object of the Legislature in founding 
this Institute was not merely to make provision for healthy intellectual 
recreation, but rather to provide guidance and aid for the people of New 
Zealand in subduing and replenishing the earth,—in the “heroic work” of 
colonization. 
The field of science may be compared to a clearing in one of our primeval 
forests, where the more trees a settler fells, the greater appears the expanse 
of wood around him; and it might almost be said that every colonist in à 
oe on HANE and unexplored country is, unconsciously, more or less of a scientific 
