14 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 



of its connection with all other countries, and of its growing 

 influence for good amongst them. Fulfilling such a position the 

 Royal Society will, no doubt, continue to receive that private and 

 State recognition and support which it now enjoys. But its real 

 vitality and influence do not so much depend upon such aid, as 

 upon the personal work of its Members, however simple or abstruse 

 that work may be. One Member may have some important 

 discovery to reveal ; another may have but a single specimen to 

 -exhibit to illustrate, perhaps, only the mode of its occurrence : both 

 may be equally worthy of record in the interests of Science. 

 What a r'ch and vast field for scientific research have we not 

 in this portion of the globe, on the land and in the fertile 

 Australasian Ocean. Its tropical jungles and its alpine heights ; 

 the wide-spread open grassy plains and the splendid forest-clad 

 mountains ; its beautiful sheltered harbour inlets from the great 

 water-way of the globe, and its interior rivers awaiting 

 engineering enterprise to convert them into navigable highways ; 

 its varied and rich agricultural, pastoral and mineral lands,' yet 

 to be occupied by millions of people whose profitable labour 

 therein is assuredly indicated ; its low lands and high-lands 

 ranging within both tropical and temperate latitudes, with their 

 •concomitant climates suited to incomers from almost any other 

 part of the world ; its geographical position and physical features 

 offering for the astronomer and meteorologist a terrestrial position 

 for celestial observation without which the science of astronomy 

 would be incomplete ; its peculiar fauna and flora embracing 

 living forms of ancient types long extinct in other regions ; its 

 branches of the human race ; its rock formations, with their 

 included remains of the past life upon the earth, furnishing their 

 data to render more complete the " geological record ; " the shallow 

 •estuarine and deep sea resources of the surrounding ocean ; — these 

 and other interdependent objects in nature justify the most 

 sanguine anticipations as to the great importance and interest 

 attaching to the science work our Society has undertaken. 



Nor do we forget that this Society is not alone in the field, 

 though it is the oldest. The kindred Scientific Societies of this 



