AUCKLAND INSTITUTE. 
First Meetinc. 17th May, 1875. 
J. C. Firth, President, in the chair. 
New Members.—J. Batger, Captain Daveney, J. Hay, J. Lindsay, C.E., 
C. C. Macmillan, J. E. Pounds, B. Tonks. 
The President delivered the 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
We commence this evening the eighth session of the Auckland branch of 
the New Zealand Institute, and it has fallen upon me as President to deliver 
the usual opening address. 
The struggles and exigencies characteristic of colonial life, whilst they 
may sometimes impart greater vivacity and piquancy to our little commu- 
nities, often offer great obstacles to the steady progress of Institutes such 
as ours. 
Nevertheless, the progress of the Colony every year gives us more men 
of wealth, leisure, and cultivated intellect, capable of rendering the pursuit 
of the various objects of the New Zealand Institute more easy and more 
successful. But from the energy and enterprise, characteristic of the 
majority of colonists, combined with the educational advantages which are 
every day being brought within the reach of all, we may look for valuable 
assistance from all classes of colonial society = carrying out the really 
noble objects of the Institute. 
For myself, I have only to say that, though I make no pretension to be 
aman of science, I, nevertheless, take a deep interest in the scientific and 
social questions of the day, and I claim the right to bring these questions, 
so far as time and opportunity will permit, to the test of the philosophy of 
common sense. 
From a scientific pomt of view, the times in which we live are charac- 
terised by close, patient, minute and accurate investigation ; by daring 
hypotheses, and by an unmistakeable idolatry of law. 
Nothing can be more admirable than the researches of Tyndal and 
Darwin ; but it will hardly be denied that some of their theories manifest 
a development of the imaginative faculties, which is, at least, remarkable 
in those who, par excellence, claim to speak only of what they know. Even 
some of the facts upon which these castles of the imagination are built are 
as unsubstantial as the theories themselves. A striking instance of this 
occurs in Darwin’s valuable work on the « Descent of Man.” He says, 
