xxx President! s Address 



models of gold workings which have been brought together 

 at the University by the unflagging zeal and assiduity of 

 Professor M'Coy, every day increases in size and importance, 

 though, I regret to say, it is becoming more difficult to view 

 it to advantage, as the rooms in which it is necessarily 

 placed become more and more crowded. I hope that the 

 example thus set will some day be followed in our large gold- 

 fields towns, and it might possibly conduce thereto if a 

 system of temporary loan, on the principle of that lately 

 introduced in connection with the Melbourne Public Library, 

 could be established 



The Zoological Museum is also making rapid progress 

 under Professor M 'Coy's charge, and on our table to-night 

 will be found the illustrations for the earliest of " The De- 

 cades of the Prodromus of the Zoology and Palaeontology of 

 Victoria," in which our learned Vice-President purposes, 

 under the auspices of this Government, elucidating the sin- 

 gularly exceptional fauna which this portion of the globe has, 

 more or less, in all ages displayed. 



In a kindred branch of Natural History, another of the 

 ornaments of our Society, Dr. Mueller, whom, in a letter 

 which I received last mail, my venerable friend Sir William 

 Hooker characterises as "the most active and intelligent 

 naturalist of the present day," continues those indefatigable 

 researches which have as it were subdued the whole flora of 

 . this continent to his sway, and left him facile princeps 

 amongst writers on Australian botany. 



Besides his literary labours in connexion with his forth- 

 coming work on " The Plants Indigenous to the Colony of 

 Victoria," and with the second volume of his " Fragmenta," 

 in which last he has recently made known to the scientific 

 world some of Stuart's plants from the central desert, as well 

 as others of much interest discovered by Dr. Beckler and 

 Mr. Fitzalan in tropical Australia, our Government botanist 



