PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 15 
some seven or eight individuals. It is not from lack of subjects, 
for there are many questions which require investigation, but 
rather from the lack of competent investigators who can spare the 
necessary time. There are but few men of leisure in the Colonies, 
and still fewer of learned leisure. 
Up to the present but little original work has been done in 
working out the chemistry of our mineral and vegetable products, 
and really but very little in many branches of biology. The 
descriptions, catalogues, lists, &c., of our flora and fauna are making 
fair progress, but still very little has been published relating to 
the development and life history of the fauna of Australia, even 
of forms of life peculiar to this part of the world. 
In matters of natural history, geology, and allied subjects, it 
is apparent to every one that the materials for original work are, 
in New South Wales, thickly spread about us, and a considerable 
amount of very valuable work is being done in this direction by 
the Linnean Society of New South Wales, but the amount which 
is waiting to be done is far more than we can cope with at 
present. 
There is probably a greater number of questions waiting to be 
solved in other branches of science, yet, from the circumstances 
naturally connected with a new country, it is not easy to make 
progress with their solution. Too often physical, chemical, and 
similar questions, not only involve long-continued labour for their 
investigation, but too often also bulky and expensive apparatus is 
required—not always to be obtained in new countries. Fortunately 
in certain branches of natural history this is not always the case, 
and, accordingly, much more work has been done in questions 
relating to the systematic sciences than to problems in the experi- 
mental ones; but few workers here have the advantage of even a 
_ poorly furnished physical or chemical laboratory, and no one of a 
first-class or well-appointed one—such does not at present exist in 
the Colony, although some improvements have of late years been 
effected in this direction at the University. 
