396 Proceedings. 
cost, say, from £2,000 to 23,000; and I would further invite others of our 
members to contribute various practical detailed plans by which the necessary 
amount might be raised. That it can be done I am convinced, if we only go 
earnestly and determinedly about it. We have, in fact, only to raise £1,000 
in cash in order to obtain the remaining £2,000 at £120 per annum of 
interest, which, I believe, we could easily realize from rents of class rooms, 
lecture rooms, and proceeds of lectures, without interfering with the ordinary 
revenue of the society. Or we might, by combining with some kindred 
institution and uniting our forces, raise the entire sum required. T press this 
earnestly on your attention, for I believe that the present state of our Library 
and Museum has been a great hindrance to us in the past, and that a better 
state of these would be an immense impetus to us for the future. 
In connection with the past of our own and kindred societies, permit me 
to invite your attention to the fifth volume of the Transactions and Proceedings 
of the New Zealand Institute, just published. In quantity and in quality it 
is equal, if not superior, to its predecessors, although I venture to think that it 
might be somewhat abridged without loss to science or loss of interest to 
general readers. "There are eighteen papers on miscellaneous subjects, the first 
of which, on * The Life and Times of Te Rauperaha,” will be found exceedingly 
interesting. There are nineteen zoological papers, some of them, in regard to 
the birds of New Zealand, of special interest ; thirteen botanical papers, in 
which our worthy secretary stands pre-eminent ; five chemical papers, all by 
Mr. Skey, of the Wellington Laboratory ; and two geological papers, besides a 
summary of the proceedings of the various affiliated societies. It strikes me 
that chemistry and geology are, though ably, not so extensively represented as 
they might be if the votaries of these respective branches of science were to 
favour us with their contributions, And the absence of geographical and 
biological papers seems to me somewhat remarkable, The absence of biological 
papers may, no doubt, be fairly attributed to the hesitation which thinkers and 
observers on such subjects must naturally have in laying their thoughts and 
observations before the public in the present unsettled state of that branch of 
science ; and yet that is just the state in which stray thoughts and observations 
may prove to be of the greatest value, The absence of geographical papers is 
less easily accounted for; for if there be one branch of elementary knowledge 
more than another in which we are defective in New Zealand, it is that of the 
geographical knowledge of our own colony. We have two, I think, small 
school books purporting to be geographies of New Zealand, but both miserably 
defective even where not positively erroneous, Our children are drilled into 
British geography rather than into that of their own native country, New 
Zealand. We find our newspaper editors constantly displaying the grossest 
ignorance of the geography of the colony, and they have no reliable book of 
