620 Proceedings. 



probably called wealtli by most. Again, it did not clearly appear in vfhat sense Mr. 

 Carruthers used the words " wealth of the •world" as different from simply weal^. Mr. 

 Carruthers spoke also of " capital " and " capital of the country." Mr. Chapman wished 

 to know the difference between capital of the country and wealth of the country. 



Mr. Carruthers, in reply, said it was not necessary to go into metaphysical nicety in 

 deiinitions of political economy ; that it certainly was impossible, as remarked by Mr. 

 Maxwell, to strictly define the boundary between implements and wealth which is useful 

 for its own sake. Bread might be said to be an implement for satisfying hunger, and the 

 satisfaction of hunger an implement for procuring happiness. But the division which he 

 had suggested of wealth was useful, and quite accurate enough for the purposes of the 

 science. He said, in reply to Mr. Chapman, that by man he meant any one man, and 

 that the stone which ^Jleased a lunatic was wealth as fully as the diamond which pleased 

 people who were not lunatics. A torpedo was wealth, because it was useful to the user ; 

 he did not recognize any algebraical minus sign which would make the discomfort which 

 the torpedo caused to the person against whom it was used neutralize the advantage 

 which it gave to the user ; The wealth of the world meant the sum total of useful things 

 at any time in existence. He said he did not use the word capital as meaning wealth at all ; 

 he considered it a word which should be altogether given up by the political economist, 

 as being too likely to suggest meanings different from the definition. 



The Chairman proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. Carruthers, not only for his present 

 paper, but for the great assistance he had always rendered to the society. He regretted 

 that the society should lose such a valuable member, and he had hoped to see Mr. 

 Carruthers one day president, as he had no doubt he would have been had he remained in 

 Wellington. 



The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation, and Mr. Carruthers briefly returned 

 thanks for the good wishes of the society towards him. 



Second Meeting. 3rd August, 1878. 

 T. Kirk, F.L.S., President, in the chair. 

 Neiv Members. — Eev. Father Sauzeau of Blenheim, A. P. Stuart, J. G. Fox. 



In opening the proceedings, the President remarked that the Society had entered 

 upon the second decade of its existence as a society affiliated to the New Zealand Insti- 

 tute. Looking back to the close of the first volume of Transactions, he found that the 

 number of members had increased from 102 to 225, and that the total of affiliated 

 societies had increased from four to seven, numbering considerably over 1,100 members, a 

 fact which was exceedingly gratifying, as showing that the taste for scientific pursuits 

 was widely diffused through the colony. The ten volumes of Transactions had been con- 

 tributed by about 200 workers, and contained a vast amount of information of great value 

 on the zoology, botany, and geology of the country, but not in a shape fully available for 

 the general public. It was therefore advisable that a united effort should be made by the 

 various societies to provide funds for the publication of a Fauna of New Zealand as 

 complete as the present state of our knowledge would allow. He referred to the recently 

 published parts of Mr. Buchanan's work on the indigenous grasses of New Zealand as a 

 step in this direction, and characterized the plates as creditable alike to the author, the 

 Geological Survey Department, and the colony, and expressed his regret that the plan of 

 the work had not been so extended as to admit of its being brought fully abreast of the 

 botanical knowledge of the day, 



