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of ; and our desire should be to reduce to law and order those things which have made 

 the one successful by accident, so that all engaged in the like pursuits may have the 

 benefit of that which has made the one successful. I do most earnestly ask our farming 

 friends to contribute to us, whether they join us as members or no, the result of their 

 operations, whether successes or failures, and the processes and conditions which have led 

 to these results. 



If I might be permitted to particularize on a subject of such importance, I would 

 specially ask for observations of facts in reference to the growth of, and substance afforded 

 to stock by the various grasses in our various soils. I would direct particular attention 

 to the alleged failure of perennial rye grass seed, so as to determme whether the failure 

 is owing to soil, climate, season, or other conditions. Only I would observe that what we 

 want are facts not opinions — the latter can be had abundantly — the former is what we 

 want. And so in regard to other crops. When a good one is grown of wheat, oats, or 

 potatoes, or a bad one, we shall ask a contribution of the facts and circumstances, the 

 soil, its previous culture, the subsod, its nature and distance below, the season, and the 

 culture ; having these, we may, perhaps, be able to deduce general laws which would 

 prove valuable to our country settlers, and especially to new settlers ; not that we would 

 desire to trench on the domains of our cognate society, the New Zealand Agricultural 

 Society. Their business is more especially with results ; ours is to work up from the 

 results to the effective cause, thus making the result, if successful, available to, if 

 unsuccessful, avoidable by, the mass of our settlers. 



And here I cannot help adverting to the comparative apathy with which the liberal offer 

 of the Colonial Laboratory to analyse soils gratis has been responded to by our country 

 settlers. An hour or two's labour would enable every farmer to know the composition of 

 his soil, a little more investigation would teach him wherein his sod was defective for 

 the growth of certain varieties of plants, and would guide him with considerable certainty, 

 not by rule of thumb, to apply stable manure, bone-dust, guano, phosphates, or other 

 manure to his land, so as to supply the missing or defective element in its composition. 



Pardon me, gentlemen, if I have dwelt too long on agriculture, but I feel that the 

 products of the sod, whether in the shape of grain, wool, grass, meat, or minerals, are the 

 fundamental elements of our colonial prosperity, and as such deserve our most special 

 attention. And very nearly allied to agriculture, as a science, is the study of zoology. 

 A strange combination it may appear to some, and yet when we look at what our farmers 

 have suffered and will yet suffer, I venture to say, from the ravages of insects, it is not 

 such a strange combination of ideas as it seems. We have, indeed, endeavoured in a sort 

 of perfunctory manner, to cope with these insect enemies by the introduction through the 

 Acclimatisation Society of insectivorous birds. And yet how many questions has this 

 same action given rise to ? What are the habits of our birds ? First, of our native birds 

 — the morepork, the kingfisher, even the hawk. Then of our introduced birds, whose 

 habits in their native habitat we know, but what are their habits in the altered circum- 

 stances in which they are placed ; for instance, are our pheasants more insectivorous than 

 graminivorous ? still an open question, I believe ; and so, also, ^with regard to other 

 birds : and then comes the higher question of the adjustment of good and evil ; for what 

 seems good is not all good, and may become an evil, and what appears to be an evil 

 has good in it, too, and may be turned to good account. These only can be determined 

 by a series of accurate observations. 



In reference specially to the insect life of New Zealand we are comparatively ignorant, 

 and so we shall be till some one breeds from the caterpillar (the easiest obtainable fona) 

 the chrysalis, and from thence the moth or butterfly ; and thence obtains the larvae of 

 the caterpillar, and observing their habits in their various stages, enables us to determine 

 the appropriate remedy for their ravages. I specially co mm end this branch of scientific 

 enquiry to those whose position or habits enable them to indulge in a country or 

 suburban life. 



But passing from those more apparently practical applications of scientific enquiry to 

 others but little less so, though less apparently so, I would point out to you that much 

 yet remains to be determined in New Zealand, even geographically. Even in this province, 

 extending as it does from lat. 39° to the Noi'th Cape, there is a large portion of it quite a 

 terra incognita save to a few. Might not those few, through our Society, make known 

 their knowledge to the many ? And even in the weU-known parts there are facts as to 

 the elevation and subsidence of the land, the creation of sandhills and their progress, and 

 conditions ; the occurrence of landslips and their conditions ; the existence and shift- 

 ing of sand-bars in or near our harbour, and their conditions ; the existence, temperature, 

 and qualities of hot springs in various localities ; these and many other geographical and 

 semi-geographical facts, would be well worth careful and systematic observation ; but 

 above all I would ask the members of this Society, and through them our settlers at large, 

 to devote some little attention to the history, mythology, ethnology, and archeology of 

 the native race. I do so specially, because they are rapidly passing away from under our 

 observation, as well as because I believe there stdl exists a rich mine for investigation and 



