ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 41 



library, without which it would have been impossible at one time 

 for me to have done any work at all." 



There is another fact, however, touching our library here which 

 demands our urgent attention. At the present time our resources 

 are not adequate for the proper binding and accommodation of 

 what even now we receive as donations from other parts of the 

 world, and what is still more serious, many of our scientific series, 

 both here and at the University, are not only incomplete, but the 

 opportunity of completing them is rapidly passing away never to 

 return. The great and munificently endowed institutions of 

 America are exhausting the market ; series which we are anxious 

 to complete and some which we have not yet acquired, are often 

 bespoken years beforehand. The scientific libraries of Sydney — 

 the capital of the mother colony of Australia — should surely be 

 the most complete in the southern hemisphere ; and it is to be 

 hoped that neither ignorance nor niggardliness will prevent us 

 equipping them with those great works and journals absolutely 

 necessary to our efficient cooperation in the intellectual and 

 industrial advance of the world. Access to the complete records 

 of all scientific work done elsewhere must be available, if we are 

 to progress as we should. Daily it becomes more and more 

 imperative that the scientific worker shall be cognisant of every 

 advance, and it is the keen recognition of this necessity that has 

 led to the undertaking of the international scientific catalogue. 

 That record of scientific work will make it impossible to be 

 ignorant of what is being done throughout the world. To reach 

 its object, however, we must also have copies of the investigations 

 themselves. The field is too vast, the cost in brain effort, time, 

 and money too great, to admit of the duplication of real work, 

 and moreover the rate of progress depends upon that economy of 

 time and effort which accrues from appreciating and utilizing the 

 results reached by our predecessors in research. Our capital, the 

 evergrowing achievement of the past, the intellectual fortune 

 acquired by centuries of exploitation by Genius, is that with which 

 we start, and to this we must add. A community failing to use 



