ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 51 



them in their place in the glass case appropriated to utilizable 

 minerals ; I conld not do more to advise those interested. 



J. G." 

 It was not strange that when the correspondence referred to 

 about the claims to discovery reached Prance (which it did without 

 my interference or knowledge), Monsieur Garnier should feel it 

 a duty to himself to place the matter before the world in its true 

 light. And in thus bringing it before this Society, I am merely 

 discharging a duty to a colleague in the Geological Society of 

 France, who years ago honored me with his confidence in the 

 discoveries he was making in New Caledonia ; as well as offering 

 to my fellow-colonists in New South Wales the results of his 

 experience, hitherto clothed in a language foreign to many among 

 them ; whilst, at the same time, I have vindicated my own right 

 to have interposed in an affair which, from my association with 

 Monsieur Garnier in his investigations, I feel myself called upon 

 a year ago to pledge myself to do on the first opportune occasion 

 of addressing the Eoyal Society. I have now redeemed my 

 pledge, perhaps to the weariness of some here present • but I 

 could not do less, nor am I called upon to do more. But I will 

 repeat the assurance before given, that I have not wished to 

 impute anything wilful in the claim of any one to the discoveries 

 of " Chromate of iron " or "Nickel" made by the gentleman 

 whom I have thus introduced to you to-night ; for ii: is clear the 

 claims arose from ignorance of the facts just explained. But it 

 may be well by this example to show the danger of men doing 

 what is growing very common in this country — the danger of 

 seeking notoriety by mistake and claiming as their own what 

 belongs to others, without first carefully inquiring into the facts 

 of the case. 



Had a mistake of this kind been confined to the Colony, it 

 would not have been of so much importance. But, unhappily, 

 nearly all the correspondence in the Sydney papers of 1874 has 

 found its way into a " Prospectus " of a " Mining Company " in 

 London, for the " working of Nickel, Cobalt, and Chrome " ; and 

 in this Prospectus, all the conflicting claims of various per- 



