for the year 1864. xcvii 



already given) to the collections of geology, minerology, and 

 mining models, in the adjacent National Museum. 



If the building were completed, I believe the development 

 of the Museum would satisfy even the Museum Committee 

 of the Royal Society, which, for so many years, watched over 

 its progress. 



For some years the Parliament has voted some thousands 

 annually (£4,000 this year) for acclimatization purposes, and 

 confided its expenditure to the Victorian Acclimatization 

 Society, by whose exertions a very large variety of useful 

 and ornamental quadrupeds, birds, fish, and insects have been 

 imported, and numerous kinds of deer and smaller game, 

 and a great variety of song and game birds have been 

 turned wild and successfully acclimatized, besides numbers 

 of semi-domesticated creatures of great prospective value, 

 as the Angora and Cashmere goats, llamas, alpacas, Ligurian 

 bees, &c, and at the present moment the English salmon 

 ova are being hatched for our colder rivers by the Society, 

 after repeated failures ; the gourami in small numbers 

 has also been introduced. The Imperial Society of 

 Acclimatization of Paris has just awarded their great gold 

 medal to the President of the Acclimatization Society of 

 Victoria, Mr. Edward Wilson, for his exertions in the cause ; 

 a compliment which, although exclusively due to the per- 

 sonal merits of the recipient, must be a source of great 

 satisfaction to us all. 



As further illustrating the progress of learning and taste 

 in the colony, I should have wished to have alluded to the 

 Public Library and the newly commenced Museum of Art 

 and Antiquities connected with it, but I have unfortunately 

 not been able to obtain the few details of information I 

 required, and I can only refer to it as an institution which 

 is one of the greatest boasts of the colony from its magnifi- 



G 



