PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE OF CANTERBUEY. 



First Meeting, bth March, 1873, 

 Henry John Tancred, President, in the chair. 

 The President delivered the following opening 



ADDRESS. 



It is my duty, as occupying the honourable position of President of the 

 Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, to which I have been elected for the 

 current year, to inaugurate the present session by the delivery of an opening 

 address. I can imagine that the rule which imposes upon me this duty might 

 be turned to most useful account by one who had the capacity and knowledge 

 required for making such an address instructive. Such an occasion as the 

 present is one of the few which afford convenient opportunities for taking a 

 general and comprehensive survey of the results which we have obtained, for 

 giving a review of the progress made in the past, and for sketching out what 

 may be achieved in the future ; for furnishing, in short, an intelligent 

 summary of the advance made towards the attainment of those objects for 

 which this body was established — that is to say, the cultivation of science, 

 literature, and art, and the development of the industrial resources of the 

 Province. This, I think, was the ideal before the minds of those who framed 

 our rules, when they made the opening address of the President a necessary 

 preliminary to the commencement of our work for the year. It is, however, 

 an ideal which can, in the nature of things, be very seldom realized. 1 need 

 hardly say that I, at least, must abandon all hope of reaching, or indeed making 

 an appi'oach to it. None indeed can, in my opinion, adequately perform such 

 a task but those who ai'e conversant with all those departments of learning and 

 culture which are comprised in the list of subjects just mentioned, and could 

 set forth in detail the excellences, and criticise with justice and discrimination 

 the views propounded on all those subjects which have been treated of before 

 this, as well as before those other societies which have become incorporated 

 with the New Zealand Institute. But while professing my inability even to 

 approach the standard which I have indicated, I think it not unprofitable to 

 keep that standard before us, as one to be aimed at, though by doing so I may 

 be rendering my own shortcomings more marked by the contrast. 



