NO. 46.— 1895.] JUBILEE COMMEMORATION. 79 



His Excellency the Governor followed, with language of 

 the warmest encouragement in regard to this scheme, and 

 on June 3 in the following year (1873) His Excellency 

 definitely announced to the Society the intention of Govern- 

 ment to proceed with the Museum. 



To the energy and taste of Sir William Gregory the Society 

 and the Colony at large are deeply indebted in this matter ; 

 and we must not, in asserting our own share in the work, 

 disparage or ignore his share ; but true as it is that but for 

 Sir William Gregory we might have long remained without 

 this Museum, it is no less true that, but for what our Society 

 had done, Sir William would never have built it. 



One of the objects for which the Society had so' long been 

 working was thus at last accomplished. As its early efforts 

 at collecting statistics had been crowned by the extension of 

 the Registrar-General's Department in 1867 and its meteoro- 

 logical observations by the addition to the Surveyor-General's 

 Department of a system of observatories dating from 1869, 

 so now its Members had the satisfaction not only of seeing 

 their plan adopted, but of seeing the collections which they 

 and their predecessors had collected and classed, accepted by 

 Government to be the property of the Colony — a monument 

 for ever of the energy and public spirit of this branch of the 

 Asiatic Society. 



This achievement, crowning the labours of such men as 

 Gygax, Kelaart, E. Layard, and Legge, takes rank in our 

 annals, side by side with the brilliant Papers and varied 

 learning which distinguished our Society in its first decade, 

 and with the wise and patient labours devoted to its service 

 by a Capper, a Layard, a Skeen, and a Fyers. 



In the " Seventies ." 



Installed in this noble building, in a hall of science 

 which — though the State had built — its own hands had 

 furnished, the Society might now look forward, one would 

 have supposed, to entering at once on a period of far greater 

 activity and popularity than ever. But this was not the case. 



