Nelson Philosophical Society. 575 



of fern, never before seen, and deliberately rooted up every fibre and rootlet of it to trans- 

 port it to Melbourne to be raised there in their hot-houses in a strange land, for the sake 

 of the money to be obtained thereby. Vandalism is too good a word to be used for such 

 an act ; that was chiefly directed against works of art of man's construction, of which it 

 might be said, what man had done once he might do again ; but, although his plea might 

 be the promotion of the species in the flower shows of Victoria, yet the risk run of its 

 extinction in the process does not justify the destruction, but legitimately calls forth my 

 protest. Similar ruthless proceedings have removed many ferns from out-of-door habitats 

 in Eugland and elsewhere. The scientific botanist, indeed, knows how to take his specimen 

 so as not to injure, but to further aid, the extension of it, while the ignorant and thought- 

 less collector will pull up and tear away from its appropriate bed a whole pile of roots and 

 bulbs just to enlarge a nosegay, and too often to be cast away as a thing of no beauty, 

 which has been neglected till it is too late to be preserved within the leaves of the drying 

 book. 



" What I say of Botany applies to the other departments as well, and I therefore am 

 proud to congratulate this Society on having before it a large field, an accessible field, 

 a varied field, and an untried field, a field in which it is well we should work, if only to 

 show to ourselves and others how much there is to be known." 



After impressing on the Society the importance of the Local Museum and Public 

 Library, and expressing a hope that popular lectures and popular scientific excursions to 

 collect observations in the field would be instituted as part of the work of the Society, 

 the President concluded by expressing the satisfaction felt at the prospect of so many 

 earnest workers being ready to take up many, if not all, of these branches in the pursuit 

 of knowledge, and hoped that " the promise of this Society will be amply fulfilled, that its 

 members will yearly increase, and that it will receive the recognition and support of the 

 public, so that we may add to the natural attractions of the place an association 

 hospitable to the devotees of science, art, and literature, and so the pure light and genial 

 heat which the cultivation of these three departments gives to the human mind, will not 

 be absent from the midst of us." 



Ordinary Meeting. 5th November, 1883. 



Dr. L. Boor, Vice-president, in the chair. 



New Members.— W. Wells, A. Elliott, A. A. Scaife, J. Tatton, jun., T. 



Mackay, David Burns, M. Andrews, C. Webb-Bowen, W. B. Gilmore, 



Peter Donald, W. E. Farver, W. E. Kowe, B. G. Begley, J. Barfield Akers, 



the Hon. Joseph Shepherd. 



1. " Notes on the Mineral Resources of New Zealand," by J. Park. 



2. Mr. S. Gully exhibited a specimen of a crab (Cancel- novce-zealandicB) prepared by 

 a process described by Professor Parker in vol. xiv. of the Trans. N.Z. Inst., p. 263. 



Ordinary Meeting, lkth December, 1883. 

 The Bishop of Nelson, President, in the chair. 

 New Members. — W. Oldham, Albert Pitt, Mostyn Jones, Charles Jones, 

 Ralph Jackson, H. D. Jackson, — Banneher, J. Sigley, Colonel B. A. 

 Branfill, Rey. R. Moore, 



