AUSTRALASIAN ASSOCIATION. 89 



that in 1883 the intrinsic value of the fixed nitrogen and phosphoric 

 acid and potash sent out annually was £592,000, taking into account 

 the wool and the wheat alone. Now that we have to add to that the 

 exported carcases of beef and mutton, bones and all, the annual loss 

 must be immensely greater. The proper cure, would, of course, be to 

 bring back return cargoes of artificial manure, but even then its 

 application to most of our pastoral lands would be out of the question. 

 I sincerely hope that the problem will be taken in hand by the 

 Agricultural College at Lincoln as a matter deserving of practical study 

 and investigation. I have already referred to several great generali- 

 sations which have exercised a powerful influence in advancing science 

 during the period I marked out for review, but so far as influencing 

 the general current of thought, and almost entirely revolutionising the 

 prevalent notions of scientific workers in every department of know- 

 ledge, the most potent of the period has been the establishment of what 

 has been termed the doctrine of evolution. The simple conception of 

 the relation of all created things by the bond of continuous inheritance 

 has given life to the dead bones of an accumulated mass ot observed 

 facts, each valuable in itself, but, as a whole, breaking down by its own 

 weight. Before this master-key was provided by the lucid instruction 

 of Darwin and Wallace, it was beyond the power of the human mind 

 to grasp and use in biological research the great wealth of minute 

 anatomical and physiological details. The previous ideas of the 

 independent creation of each species of animal and plant in a little 

 Garden of Eden of its own must appear puerile and absurd to the 

 young naturalist of the present day ; but in my own College days to 

 have expressed any doubts on the subject would have involved a sure 

 and certain pluck from the examiner. I remember well that I first 

 obtained a copy of Darwin's " Origin of Species " in San Francisco 

 when on my way home from a three years' sojourn among the Red 

 Indians in the Rocky Mountains. Having heard nothing of the 

 controversies, I received the teaching with enthusiasm, and felt very 

 much surprised on returning to my alma mater to find that I was 

 treated as a heretic and a backslider. Nowadays it is difficult to 

 realise what all the fuss and fierce controversy was about, and the 

 rising school of naturalists have much cause for congratulation that 

 they can start fair on a well-assured logical basis of thought, and steer 

 clear of the many complicated and purely ideal systems which were 

 formerly in vogue for explaining the intentions of the Creator and for 

 torturing the unfortunate students. The doctrine of evolution was the 

 simple-minded acceptance of the invariability of cause and effect in the 

 organic world as in the inorganic ; and to understand his subject in any 

 bianch of natural science, the learner has now only to apply himself to 

 trace in minutest detail the successive steps in the development of the 

 phenomena he desires to study. With energetic leaders educated in 

 such views, and who, after their arrival in the colony, felt less 

 controversial restraint, it is not wonderful that natural history, and 

 especially biology, should have attracted so many ardent workers, and 

 that the results should have been so good. A. rough test may be 

 applied by comparing the number of species of animals and plants 

 which had been described before the foundation of the colony and those 

 up to the present time. In 1840, Dr. Gray's list in Deiffenbach's work 

 gives the number of described species of animals as 594. The number 



