Inaugural Address. 11 



observer. For example, — tlie first discoyery of the mineral treasures which 

 are now fast yielding up their riches to us, — of our coal, our gold, our copper, 

 and our iron, — is due, not so much to scientific research, as to chance, if that 

 term can be properly applied to any of the great dispensations of Providence. 

 When such a variety of valuable minerals has been presented to our view, 

 almost without design or exertion on the part of the earliest discoverers, 

 what rich harvests of knowledge, what vast practical aid to the industrial 

 arts, may be expected from the systematic exploration of the geology and 

 mineralogy of this country ! Our extensive coal fields are storehouses .of 

 wealth, which even now contribute in no slight degree towards our material 

 welfare and our expanding commerce. "What the future may bring forth it 

 is not for man to foretell with confidence ; but certainly coal has been the 

 instrument by which the steam engine and others of the most wonderful 

 inventions of modern times have been enabled to triumph over time and 

 space. Again, I trust that industry, guided by science, will develop still 

 further our gold fields. It should never be forgotten that, while the gold 

 discoveries have accelerated by at least a hundred years what without them 

 would have been the comparatively gradual progress of the Australasian 

 group of colonies, they have also powerfully facilitated the removal of com- 

 mercial restrictions and the advancement of social improvement in the 

 parent State, adding immensely at the same time to the general trade and 

 wealth of the British Empire and of the entire civilized world. 



The geological survey of ]Kew Zealand, in addition to the practical 

 advantages thereby secured to the existing settlers and their successors, will 

 assist materially in solving many important and interesting problems in 

 general science. To quote from the authoritative v/ork of Dr. Hochstetter : 

 " Not inhabited, probably, till within late centuries of the history of man, 

 and then but thinly populated, and only along the coasts and along the banks 

 of navigable rivers, New Zealand has fully preserved within its interior the 

 originality and peculiarity of its remarkable animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 up to our present tune. 'No monuments of any kind, no tombs of kings, no 

 ruins of cities, no time-honoured fragments of shattered palace domes and 

 temples, are there to tell of the deeds of ages or nations past and gone. 

 But Nature, through her mightiest agencies — through fire and water — has 

 stamped her history in indelible characters on the virgin soil of the islands. 

 The wild Alpine heights of the South, towering in silent grandeur to the sky, 

 their lofty summits crested with fields of ice and decked with glacier robes ; 

 the volcanoes of the North, looming up into the regions of perpetual snow, 

 glisten from afar, dazzling the wondering eyes of the mariner as he ap- 

 proaches the coast. Fertile and well watered alluvial plains are there 

 awaiting the enterprising settler ; a virgin soil, on which he f ouitds a new 



