1. ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. 



the great rule of thumb, and it was not till the time of 

 James Watt, who was helped by the investigation of heat 

 physics by Professor Black, that engineers took advantage, 

 to any great degree, of mechanical science. Pambour, 

 Olerk Maxwell, Faraday, Kelvin, and Lodge, with others, 

 were mentioned as having more recently contributed to the 

 achievements of the engineer, while the tendency in the 

 latter half of the past century to educate the engineer in 

 technical institutions rather than by pupilage helped further 

 in bringing about the connexion which was the subject of 

 the address. 



The Odyssey of Homer was by some considered to be an 

 allegory of man's life through this world, with its tempta- 

 tions and dangers, and of his protection therefrom by the 

 heavenly powers. This wonderful story of old might be 

 taken as an illustration of the subject of this address ; the 

 great hero Odysseus, working ever onward to his goal, but, 

 even though he was called the man of many devices, the 

 engineer of his age, blindly falling into difficulties often of 

 his own making, nevertheless ever rescued and sustained 

 by the fair goddess of all science, the grey eyed Athene. 



Science had one great distinction over law, literature, 

 and art, and that was originality. Law was a mass of 

 precedents ; literature was largely composed of echoes from 

 the classics; while Greece and the middle ages had 

 exhausted our ideas in art ; not so in science, in which 

 there were many brilliant originators. The absolute 

 necessity of science to the conditions of modern life was 

 then dwelt upon, illustrations being freely given, and the 

 undue prominence given by Australians to physical culture 

 rather as an end, than as a means to mental advancement, 

 was also commented on, the latter principle being as old 

 as Plato. There was an insufficient appreciation of scientific 

 work, to which we might be awakened by some crushing 



