16 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



to deal with our droughts, how to profitably cultivate our lands 

 without impoverishing or exhausting them, how to maintain and 

 improve our stock, how best to draw on our mineral supplies, 

 how to most efficiently and most economically work up our 

 raw materials into manufactured products. Every commercial 

 interest in the State, every individual, is most deeply interested 

 in the manner in which our country is handled by Government. 

 John Smithson, who provided America with the incentive and 

 the means to found the magnificent Smithsonian Institution, 

 declared his strong conviction " that it is in his knowledge that 

 Man has found his greatness, . . . and consequently that no 

 ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.' 7 

 How much have Australians had to pay for the ignorance of 

 of one of the Legislatures of the habits and propagating powers 

 of the common rabbit 1 We learn that over 20,000 foxes were 

 destroyed in Victoria last year. It is the Victorian farmers who 

 now pay most heavily for the wicked ignorance which allowed of 

 the introduction of this vermin. In a few years it will be the 

 farmers of New South Wales and South Australia. How light- 

 heartedly the sparrow was admitted to the rights of Australian 

 citizenship, just owing to ignorance of the generic distinction 

 between Passer and Accentor ! How much money is needed for 

 the eradication of Bathurst Burr, Prickly Pear, Water Hyacinth, 

 Bramble and Sweetbriar, Codlin Moth, Waxy Scale, Pear Slug, 

 and Red Spider, owing to carelessness or lack of knowledge in 

 the early days 1 How France paid for the careless introduction 

 of Phylloxera into her vineyards, and Ireland suffered for 

 admitting the Colorado Beetle among her potatoes ! Fortunately 

 these costly lessons have not been lost upon the Legislatures of 

 the present, and watch is kept at our gates against the admission 

 of such undesirable immigrants, whether they threaten our 

 pastures, our poultry, or our fruit. By such heavy punitive 

 payments Government, Newspapers and People are learning by 

 degrees that ignorance of Nature is costly. It is an easy 

 coiollary that to avoid such penalties in the future we need to 

 multiply, to train, to employ and to trust the scientific worker. 



