404 Proceedings. 
evening. It is just sixteen years this month since we held our first meeting 
in one of the upper rooms of the old Provincial Government Buildings—a 
very modest place compared to the one which, by the courtesy of his Honor 
the Superintendent, we are allowed to occupy this evening. Casting my 
mind back to these early efforts to kindle in our midst the torch of science, 
it seems to me that a glance (however hasty and imperfect) at the state of 
our knowledge, at that time, of the natural history and resources of the 
country, as compared with what it is at present, will best illustrate the 
rapid progress that has since been made in every department of natural and 
physical science. 
At the time to which I refer the scientific literature of the Colony con- 
sisted of Dr. Hooker’s ‘New Zealand Flora,’ Dr. Mantell’s chapters on 
New Zealand in his “ Fossils of the British Museum,” the ‘‘ Zoology of the 
Voyage of the ‘ Erebus’ and ‘ Terror,’ ’’ Dr. Dieffenbach’s two volumes of 
‘* Travels,” which contained much information on geology and some valu- 
able natural historal appendices, Professor Owen’s early memoirs on 
Dinornis and its allies in the ‘“‘ Transactions of the Zoological Society,” 
besides a few minor works and scattered papers in the proceedings of 
various learned bodies. With the exception of the Botany, which had been 
explored at a very early date by Banks, Solander, Sparmann, and the two 
Forsters, and had afterwards been exhaustively treated by the accomplished 
Director of Kew, no department of New Zealand biology had been, in any 
sense, properly worked. ‘The lists of the “ Fauna’’ appended to Dieffen- 
bach’s “ Travels,” although useful to students in the Colony as a basis to 
work upon, were enumerations of such species only as were known to 
science, and they were confessedly imperfect. In every section of zoology 
the number of recorded species has been considerably increased. For 
example, the whales and dolphins positively mentioned by that author as 
inhabiting the New Zealand seas were only four; the number has since 
been increased to 21, and new species are being continually added. Of the 
84 species of birds enumerated, no less than 17 were of doubtful authority ; 
the number of well ascertained species has now reached 155, and of most 
of them the life history has been exhaustively written. The 6 lizards have 
since increased to 14, not including one or two doubtful species. The list 
of fishes was then 92; it now comprehends 163 species, and fresh dis- 
coveries are being constantly made. Although the list of mollusea even 
then included 240 species, the number has now increased to 502; the 
radinia and crustacea have been largely multiplied, while the list of insects 
en to ne 1000 recorded forms. In botany, large and im- 
ra Pe = made in every section, chiefly through the zeal 
ve islands. Dr. Hooker's ‘‘ Hand-book of the New 
