xcvi President's Address 



one entering into the spirit of the undertaking with a zest 

 which must surely be due to kindly feelings of appreciation 

 for this young country in its endeavours in every depart- 

 ment to earn quickly a foremost place. 



In the department of mining machinery, so important to 

 the colony, I have succeeded in getting together a series far 

 surpassing those of most of the Government Schools of Mines 

 in Europe, and scarcely behind any of them. 



Considerable materials both in manuscripts and litho- 

 graphed plates, have been accumulated for the publication of 

 a serial memoirs of the Museum, in which catalogues and 

 various treatises connected with the collections are to 

 appear ; and in the present year the publication will com- 

 mence of a series of Decades which I have been preparing, 

 illustrative of the Natural History and Palaeontology of the 

 Colony. 



The most important step in the progress of. the Museum 

 was made last year, in the erection of rather less than half of 

 the permanent building? devoted to containing the whole of 

 the Government collections appertaining to the Natural and 

 Applied Sciences, on a plot of ground granted by the 

 University for the purpose, at about 150 feet from the 

 University Science Lecture Rooms. This has afforded about 

 half the space required for the arrangement of the mining, 

 geological, and other collections, and secures the important 

 advantage for the country of making the collections useful 

 as aids to the instruction given in the adjacent lecture 

 rooms (where non -matriculated students may attend lectures 

 in any one of the branches of science illustrated in the 

 Museum), as well as accessible to the general public, upwards 

 of 40,000 of whom visit the rooms yearly. 



The establishment of a Mining School is rendered easy by 

 this proximity of the University Lecture Rooms (in which 

 eight out of the ten courses of instruction required are 



