Address of the President. 205 



here early found a home, in which for centuries to come the 

 philosopher, no longer a wanderer, may meet the man of 

 kindred turn of mind — an asylum where united work may 

 strengthen the researches otherwise lost, perhaps, where 

 example may arouse the unconscious talent to intellectual 

 activity, and where the bond of science will connect all its 

 disciples here in an harmonious and powerful communion. 

 With the emotions of pride and pleasure which we experience 

 in inaugurating on this occasion the new and hopeful phasis 

 of our Institute, are mingled feelings of deep gratitude to 

 those who, in a spirit of enlightened liberality, have endowed 

 us with the means of raising this edifice. Calmly contem- 

 plating our new position, we feel that the advantages can 

 hardly be over estimated which the possession of this build- 

 ing, even unfinished as it is, at once confers. May we not 

 daily assemble here for the promotion of mutual knowledge 

 by social intercourse ? Shall we not henceforth find avail- 

 able all those literary contributions which, as tokens of 

 adoption of brotherhood, we have received from other scien- 

 tific unions, and find the sources of delightful information in 

 those treasures of discoveries and theories, directing perhaps 

 our thoughts in channels of research formerly untraversed ? 

 Whilst thus all the newest achievements of science are early 

 brought within our reach, the horizon of observation with 

 increasing clearness will extend around us, and the grain, 

 sown by a stranger's hand, bear here perhaps its harvest. 

 Great will be the impetus now given to our work ; greater still 

 will be the gain which we may now prognosticate for the re- 

 moter future of the Institute. Our imagination may carry 

 us onward to a distant time, when all assembled with us now 

 shall long have ceased to exist on earth ; when other genera- 

 tions have extended this building to one of the more noble of 

 the grandest southern city ; when a long series of discoveries, 

 important in their bearings on Australia's prosperity, shall 

 have been first enunciated at this forum ; when those scanty 

 shelves of books shall have expanded to a library, bearing tes- 

 timony to the literary work in which this Institute shared ; 

 when a glance at the busts of the wisest of all ages, raised 

 here in veneration of by- gone greatness, shall to new efforts 

 excite the wearied mind ; when a gallery of works of art shall 

 elevate the thoughts to sublime aesthetics ; and when collec- 

 tions from every region of the globe shall to the searching eye 

 unfold that harmony eternal which Isis' works pervade. And 

 then, perhaps (if we may be allowed to indulge in this train 



