Tlie Australasian Association. 2 I 7*7 



Majesty, which has been signalized by enormous strides in 

 Science. It has been a period of gathering into working form 

 immense stores of % previously-acquired observation and ex- 

 periment and of an escape of the scientific mind from the tram- 

 mels of superstition and hazy speculation regarding what 

 may be termed common things. Laborious work had been 

 done and many grand generalizations had been formerly 

 arrived at in physical science ; but still, in the work of 

 bringing things to the test of actual experience, investi- 

 gators were still bound by imperfect and feeble hypotheses 

 and supposed natural barriers among the sciences. But 

 science is one and indivisible, and its sub-divisions, such as 

 physics, chemistry, biology, are only matters of conveni- 

 ence for study. The methods are the same in all, and their 

 common object is the discovery of the great laws of order 

 under which this universe has been evoked by the great 

 Supreme Power. 



The great fundamental advance during the last fifty 

 years has been the achievement of far reaching gen- 

 eralizations, which have provided the scientific worker 

 with powerful weapons of research. Thus the modern 

 " atomic theory," with its new and clearer concep- 

 tions of the intimate nature of the elements and their 

 compounds that constitute the earth and all that it sup- 

 ports, has given rise to a new chemistry, in which the syn- 

 thetical or building-up method of proof is already working- 

 marvels in its application to manufactures. It is, moreover, 

 creating a growing belief that all matter is one, and reviv- 

 ing the old idea that the inorganic elementary units are 

 merely centres of motion specialized in a homogeneous 

 medium, and that these units have been continued on 

 through time, but with such individual variations as give 

 rise to derivative groups, just as we find has been the case 

 in the field of organic creations. The idea embodied in 

 this speculation likens the molecule to the vortex rings 

 which Helmholtz found must continue to exist for ever, if 

 in a perfect fluid free from all friction they are once gene- 

 rated, as a result of impacting motion. There is something 



