ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 27 



Mr. J. H. Maiden, Curator of the Technological Museum, 

 Sydney, has contributed to this Society several valuable papers 

 upon the Tan-substances obtained in New South Wales. And 

 Mr. Angus Mackay, under the auspices of the Board of Technical 

 Education, has been doing good work in lecturing in the principal 

 farming districts upon agricultural science. But practical 

 experience founded upon scientific observation is specially needed, 

 and such might well be obtained on the experimental farms 

 which it is said the Government is about to establish in the 

 different districts. 



For geological investigation, New South Wales presents a 

 region of unsurpassed interest — an interest of a three-fold 

 character, as viewed in its purely geological, palseontological, and 

 mining or economic aspects. 



The surface features of the Colony — comprising plains, 

 mountains, and precipitous ravines— -are composed of rock 

 formations, which extend beyond the lines marking the political 

 bounds of N. S. Wales, and connect with others to form a union 

 of great value in aiding the completion of the Geological Record 

 as revealed in the various land surfaces of the globe. 



The geology of our Colony, therefore, to be rightly understood, 

 must be studied in connection with that of the other Colonies ; 

 and in like manner our Australian Continent, though so isolated, 

 is indispensable as a field for research before a true interpretation 

 of the geology of the earth can be arrived at. Thus Geological 

 Science not only compels a union of workers in the different 

 provinces of Australia, but throughout the world, and in this 

 union each worker is rewarded by a sense of the value of his 

 share in the progress achieved. 



New South Wales affords a field of wide extent as yet but 

 little explored. Notwithstanding all that has been done, including 

 the life-long labours of the late Rev. W. B. Clarke, who laid the 

 foundation-stone, so to speak, of Australian Geology, even the 

 foundation itself is at present incomplete. 



