2S AXNIVEllS.VllY ADDRESS 



have often inquired for our habitat. Where are we, as a body, to 

 be found? Certainly, for one night in a month, for eight months 

 in the year, we are to be found for a couple of hours either iu 

 this apartment or in some other which we have been obliged to 

 hire. But if any one should take interest enough in us to wish 

 to pay a visit of iuquiry on any other occasion — to what House 

 of the Society could he be directed ? 



Say, on what enchanted ground 

 Is our dwelling to be found ? 



If any one desires to profit by a reference to the published 

 works which we are supposed to own for the good of our mem- 

 bers, how, under present arrangements, can they be got at. ( >r 

 what surveillance is there on any supposition, if the key of the 

 "" cupboard in the corner " could be procured, without an eight 

 miles' journey to obtain it or return it, and at the risk too of not 

 finding the custodian at home ? If the liberality of our corre- 

 sponding friends should increase, our bibliothecal lock-up will 

 have to be enlarged, in order to confine as securely as before 

 volumes condemned to an unending imprisonment. Light may 

 be shed around us from various luminaries, but its doom has 

 hitherto been perpetual obscurity. We are like dwellers in the 

 desert living in tents, without a spot of earth to call our own. 

 Every petty village in the land is aiming to obtain, by means of 

 its School of Arts, a recognized position — a recognized habitation, 

 and a social standing, even at public expense. But is the prin- 

 cipal Association of a voluntary kind in New South Wales for 

 the advancement of science and learning to be satisfied with the 

 title it boasts of, and to be amply gratified by what is, however, 

 without doubt a boon, the printing of the pamphlets which we 

 call our Transactions ? 



Some who should aid us in our honorable endeavours to do a 

 little good in our generation and day, but who stand aloof from 

 us, are heard occasionally to utter a Ion mot at our seemingly 

 stagnant condition. 



A Erench philosopher has said justly, " On rtcst jamais si 

 ridicule 'par les qualites que Von a que par celles que Von affectc 



