PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. V 



left the author's brain. Till we get proper appreciation of 

 scientific work, or are rudely awakened from self com- 

 placency by some crushing loss in trading, or in war, we 

 shall not see the urgency of arming our citizens, in the 

 great rivalry of nations, with better technical education. 

 If the money spent on this in the British Empire were 

 equal to that in Germany, we should hear no complaints 

 of threatened loss of commercial supremacy. Professor 

 Perry, indeed, recently proposed that £1,000,000 be granted 

 by the British Government to encourage men of science to 

 devote their energies to the increase of efficiency in the 

 steam engine, and to the great economy of fuel, which 

 forms so large a portion of the national assets, and if we 

 could induce some foreign nations to dump down, on our 

 shores, some of that common sense which guides them in 

 such matters, it would be well for us here in Australia, as 

 well at at home. 



There is no doubt that we want more and better technical 

 education in the Colonies. Progress has been made in this 

 in Europe and America, and more especially in Germany, 

 to which is probably owing the fact that, according to 

 recent statistics, the original scientific papers published in 

 that country, amount in number up to date, to 43°/° of the 

 whole of those of the world. While the male population 

 of Germany increased from 1870 to 1900, by 40°/% the 

 students at universities and technical colleges increased 

 by 164f; but it is not the provision of educational means 

 which is enough, we must have the desire to use them, as 

 indicated by these German figures. It has been well said 

 that the question is not whether a man has gone through 

 the university, it is whether the university has gone through 

 him. Training in habits of exact observation and intelligent 

 inference is wanted, not that interest which is expressed 

 by the observation of a man of unscientific temperament, 



