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ANITIVEBSAET ADDRESS 



OF 



^ht f resibcnt, 

 Professor Kernot, M.A., C.E. 



(Delivered to the Members of the Eoyal Society of "Victoria, at their 

 Annual Conversazione, held 26th October, 1886.) 



The progress of Science, though a natural and orderly 

 development, does not take place at a uniform rate. New 

 discoveries do not succeed each other with the regularity of 

 the seasons. On the contrary, there are often long periods of 

 apparent stagnation, or at least of but little visible advance- 

 ment, with intervening epochs of brilliant success. Just as 

 the miner often labours for weeks and months with insignifi- 

 cant returns, and then by a single stroke of the pick unearths 

 a gem of fabulous value, so the scientific investigator may 

 spend weary years of patient research with but little to show 

 for his toil, and then at one happy stroke dazzle the world 

 by some brilliant discovery. Incalculable labour is often 

 expended in following up a wrong clue, in tracing down to 

 the bitter end a path that leads nowhere. Such labour is 

 not really lost. When there is but a limited number of 

 conceivable alternations, each one that is thoroughly investi- 

 gated and proved false, brings us a step nearer the desired 

 truth, and the happy discoverer of the great law or principle 



