4 Inaugural Address. 
rather question the continuance of this prosperity, recognising 
in it the means to a more desirable and higher end. 
The disturbances which we have experienced with our 
acquisition make room for the foundation of a future social 
greatness. 
Admitting this position, how can we advance this end? The 
difficulties of experiment in a new country will, doubtless, give 
additional importance to the culture of correct and minute 
observation. Who can predict the result which wili arise from 
the simplest’ discoveries? A stain upon a stone, a drop of 
coloured water, may prove of sufficient significance to fill the 
mountain’s solitudes with the iron life ofmachinery. Let us 
prove, rather than assert, the utility of research. Let us . 
enforce a due recognition of the labour of the inventor and 
discoverer until his national importance be acknowledged. 
And while thus in a general view, we cannot fail to see the 
value of those pursuits, how much more do they force them- 
selves upon our observation when we scan them in detail. 
The objects of our Institution will not be answered unless 
the geologist, the chemist, and the representative of the 
associated sciences conjointly labour to produce those results 
which have justly become the pride and glory of the civilised 
world. 
The mere mechanical arts are but the secondary results 
of science, and as accumulating facts, though necessarily 
laborious, are the first step towards eliminating truth; let us 
therefore sturdily arm ourselves to the acquisition of them, 
forgetting even what has been termed the sublimity of 
deductive philosophy, in the less honourable, but no less 
arduous and valuable, efforts of the practical experimentalist. 
Such labours, ever pursued under difficulties, seldom 
rewarded commensurately with their importance, it shall be’ 
our duty and our interest, to facilitate ; and while thus striving 
for these ends let us endeavour to secure, by singleness of 
purpose and unity of action, the general sympathy. 
