AUSTRALASIAN ASSOCIATION. J J 



to prevent, and at their first appearance to uproot, those evils from 

 ■which the Mother Country has not yet been able to free herself. Thus 

 you find the same beautiful forms of Divine worship in Christchurch 

 Cathedral, in your churches and chapels, as we have at Home. The 

 youth of all classes have the advantages of elementary education as they 

 have at Home, with this difference, that here it is without direct cost 

 to the parents, who are relieved of the charge of their children during 

 the troublesome years of infancy, and who, by leaving them at school 

 till riper years, may obtain for them something more than an education 

 which is elementary. You have public schools on the lines of those of 

 Eton and Harrow, to whose agency illustrious statesmen and warriors 

 have attributed much of England's pre-eminence among nations ; and 

 you possess richly endowed institutions for training adults, not only in 

 intellectual pursuits, btrt also in those arts which enable men to subdue 

 the wilderness, and to make the earth bring forth her increase. Let me, 

 in passing, pay a warm tribute to the valuable work carried on by the 

 University of New Zealand, whose career and position, both in respect 

 of curriculum and number of students, compare favourably with the 

 older institutions of Sydney and Melbourne. The ladies present will 

 not forget that recognition is due from their sex to the liberal-minded 

 action of this University in having been the first to open its doors to 

 women students by conferring on them equality with men in the matter 

 of degrees. On the other hand, you have not allowed that great social 

 question which is convulsing Europe, the disposal of the indigent poor, 

 to become a source of discontent and disturbance. You have avoided 

 the pauper workhouses where the State grudgingly gives a maintenance 

 to the aged life-long worker, under conditions the least agreeable in life 

 lest any should be found to wish to go and do likewise. What wonder, 

 then, that such an institution as the British Association should have its 

 counterpart in Australasia, an Association eminently fitted to nourish 

 in such communities as these, removing science from the pursuit only 

 of the few and marking the democracy of knowledge, by sympathy 

 begetting knowledge and adding again to sympathy. You have chosen 

 as your place of meeting this year the colony over which I have the 

 honour to preside in the name of her Majesty, and, in my dual capacity 

 as the Queen's representative (for does not your very name denote a 

 bond ot Imperial unity in its purpose 1 ?), and as the mouthpiece of this 

 important community, I bid you a hearty welcome to our shores. If a 

 layman may express an opinion on such a point, I would say that I 

 think the selection has been eminently a wise one, and that there are 

 reasons why this meeting should be the most interesting yet held by 

 the Association, for in New Zealand you may find objects of scientific 

 interest which will, I believe, amply repay you for your voyage of 

 1,200 miles, as I have found them repay my less cultured mind for its 

 voyage of 12,000. Certain I am that no word of regret ever fell from 

 any member of the British Association that that Association should 

 have transferred its sphere of operations in 1884 from Great Britain to 

 one of the younger members of the British Empire ; and, if in Canada, 

 why, at some future time, with our present improved steam com- 

 munication, should not the British Association meet in Australia, or 

 even in New Zealand? On that occasion, Lord Landsowne, Governor- 

 General of Canada, commented on the difficulty with which Science 

 would have to contend in competing with material activity in a young 



