AUSTRALASIAN ASSOCIATION. 85 



left behind, at the request of the Government, to make a prolonged 

 excursion to the North Island and in Nelson ; and he it was who laid 

 the foundation of our knowledge of the stratigraphical geology of New 

 Zealand. Since then the work of scientific research has been chiefly 

 the result of State surveys, aided materially by the zeal of members 

 of the New Zealand Institute, and of late years by an increasing band 

 of young students, who are fast coming to the front under the careful 

 science training that is afforded by our University Colleges. In the 

 epoch of their development the Australasian colonies have been 

 singularly fortunate. The period that applies to New Zealand is 

 contemporaneous with the reign of Her Majesty, which has been 

 signalised by enormous strides in science. It has been a period of 

 gathering into working form immense stores of previously-acquired 

 observation and experiment, and of an escape of the scientific mind 

 from the trammels of superstition and hazy speculation regarding what 

 may be termed common things. Laborious work has been done and 

 man}' grand generalisations have been arrived at in physical science ; 

 but still, in the work of bringing things to the actual experiment, 

 investigators were bound by imperfect and feeble hypotheses aud 

 supposed natural barriers among the sciences. But science is one and 

 indivisible, and its subdivisions, such as physics, chemistry, biology, are 

 only matters of convenience for study. The methods are the same in 

 all, and their common object is the discovery of the great laws of order 

 under which this universe has been evoked by the great Supreme 

 Power. The great fundamental advance during the last fifty years 

 has been the achievement of far reaching generalisations, which have 

 provided the scientific worker with powerful weapons of research. 

 Thus the modern " atomic theory," with its new and clearer conceptions 

 of the intimate nature of the elements and their compounds that 

 constitute the earth and all that it supports, has given rise to a new 

 chemistry, in which the synthetical or building-up method of proof is 

 already working marvels in its application to manufactures. It is, 

 moreover, creating a growing belief that all matter is one, and reviving 

 the old idea that the inorganic elementary units are merely centres of 

 motion specialised in a homogeneous medium, and that these units have 

 been continued on through time, but with such individual variations as 

 give rise to derivative groups, just as we find has been the case in the 

 field of organic creations. The idea embodied in this speculation likens 

 the molecule to the vortex rings which Helmholtz found must continue 

 to exist for ever, if in a perfect fluid free from all friction they are once 

 generated, as a result of impacting motion. There is something very 

 attractive in this theory of the constitution of matter which has been 

 advocated by Sir William Thomson. He illustrates it by likening the 

 form of atoms to smoke rings in tlin atmosphere, which, were they 

 only formed under circumstances such as above described, must 

 continue to move without changing form, distinguished only from 

 the surrounding medium by their motion. As long as the original 

 conditions of the liquid exist they must continue to revolve. Nothing 

 can separate, divide, or destroy them, and no new units can be formed 

 in the liquid without a fresh application of the creative impact. The 

 doctrine of the conservation of energy is a second powerful instrument 

 of research that has developed within our own times. How it has 

 cleared away the cobwebs that formerly encrusted our ideas about the 



