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societies can be devoted ; and most of the associated societies, and oui- own in 

 particular, are so fortunate as to possess indefatigable and accomplished workers 

 in these fields, to whom the jjast success is almost entirely owing. Chiefly by 

 their means ai-e our museums becoming worthy representatives of the primeval 

 New Zealand, instructive guides to the natural history as well as to the indus- 

 trial resources of the colony ; and to them we owe the interest which the two 

 volumes of Transactions already published unquestionably possess, for they 

 contain no ephemeral controversies or disputable theories, and very few matters 

 of mere local interest ; but they consist chiefly in undoubted records of the 

 great truths of nature, results of painstaking research and laborious explora- 

 tions, rounds in the ladder of knowledge, equally necessary for everyone who 

 would scale its height, whether here or in the great centres of scientiflc 

 knowledge in the capitals of Europe. 



In these branches of scientific knowledge, it appears to me — an unscientific 

 and thei-efore hai-dly competent Avitness — that the labours of the JSTew Zealand 

 Institute as a whole, and of our own branch of it in particular, leave nothing 

 to be desired, save only that the labourers were more niimerous. Our 

 secretary, Mr. Kirk, Captain Hutton, and Mr. Gillies, have amply redeemed ng 

 from any imputation of failure in this province ; and I trust that they will 

 continue to enrich our museum, and to give value to our published Transactions 

 by their contributions ; and, while thej^ do so, the interests of natural history 

 will be safe. One other subject on which the field is still open to original 

 research has not been so efiectually laboured. I allude to that most interesting 

 branch of ethnology which ought to be so peculiarly the object of study in 

 this part of New Zealand — the history and peculiarities of the native race. It 

 is curious that while many excellent papers on this subject have been 

 read before the New Zealand Institute, not one has come from Aiickland, 

 where by far the greatest number and the most important tribes of the natives 

 live. 



But while the branches of science connected with natural history have 

 been assidiously cultivated with so much credit to the Institute and advantage 

 to the colony, and while some attention has been given to a few purely local 

 topics, I apprehend that we have hitherto overlooked others in which, indeed, 

 no opportunity of original research is open to us, and no hope of discovery 

 afibrds a stimulus to the student, and in relation to which all that is left to us 

 is the humbler duty of introducing and encouraging, or, to use the current 

 term, of " acclimatising" lines of thought which are being pursued with such 

 vast effect elsewhere, and which are so rapidly enlarging and revolutionising 

 recently received ideas on such subjects, that one who should stay in these 

 remote parts of the world, with only the ordinary manuals of chemistry, 

 astronomy, meteorology, biology, and physics generally to refer to, would soon 



