40 



OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY. 



The work of the past year warrants the opinion that the two funda- 

 mental objects of this Society have been studiously kept before us 

 Its founders were desirous that it should not only afford an agreeable 

 medium of intercommunication to those whose tastes led them to the 

 pursuit of similar studies ; but that it should also present a means of 

 illustrating and recording the many interesting natural phenomena which 

 are altogether peculiar to this country, and which it is to be feared would 

 be otherwise in a few years' time irrevocably lost to the records of 

 science. In respect to the latter and more important object, I affirm that 

 the Society has attained a larger measure of results than at any other 

 period of its existence. We shall have removed for one year at the least 

 the reproach made against us by the President of the Linnasan Society of 

 New South Wales in his anniversary address, that South Australia had 

 not contributed anything to the literature of natural history. This 

 success is in part due to the knowledge of the fact that the Society would 

 make every endeavour to renew the publications of its transactions, and 

 thus by guaranteeing that original observations so laboriously effected 

 should be published in a more tangible and permanent form than hitherto, 

 authors have been induced to make this Society the channel of communi- 

 cation with the scientific world at large. The publication of such papers 

 must always be regarded as a matter of necessity, as by such means are 

 we only enabled to keep up friendly relations with learned bodies else- 

 where. Though we have been ambitious to secure only original papers 

 for our evening meetings, and have sought to press capable men into the 

 service of the Society, yet we have not unfrequently been reminded of 

 an insufficiency of supply ; but we, nevertheless, believe that as the im- 

 portance and usefulness of the Society are better known, the difficulty 

 in this respect will become less and less. At any rate, our present 

 success can hardly fail to stimulate those who have aided us to fresh 

 exertion, and to encourage those who have not yet assisted us to enter 

 the vast arena of research. A remark made by Mr. J. S. Lloyd on the 

 public estimation in which the Society is held, in his paper on tl The 

 present position of the Society," read July 24, 1866, would seem to apply 

 with equal force now as then, and it may be repeated : — " Of course the 

 amount of good effected by the Society has to be taken in some measure 

 upon trust ; but we feel that it is to the advantage of ourselves and the 

 colony that attention should be given to science, literature, and art, and 

 because the positive or practical benefit effected by us may not be exactly 

 arrived at, either by weight or measure, we are not the less certain that 



