4 



Inaugural Address, 



rather question the continuance of this prosperity, recognising 

 in it the means to a more desirable and higher end. 



The disturbances which we have experienced with our 

 acquisition make room for the foundation of a future social 

 greatness. 



Admitting this position, how can we advance this end ? The 

 difficulties of experiment in a new country mil, doubtless, give 

 additional importance to the culture of correct and minute 

 observation. Who can predict the result which will arise from 

 the simplest discoveries ? A stain upon a stone, a drop of 

 coloured water, may prove of sufficient significance to fill the 

 mountain's solitudes with the iron life of machinery. Let us 

 prove, rather than assert, the utility of research. Let us 

 enforce a due recognition of the labour of the inventor and 

 discoverer until his national importance be acknowledged. 



And while thus in a general view, we cannot fail to see the 

 value of those pursuits, how much more do they force them- 

 selves upon our observation when we scan them in detail. 



The objects of our Institution will not be answered unless 

 the geologist, the chemist, and the representative of the 

 associated sciences conjointly labour to produce those results 

 which have justly become the pride and glory of the civilised 

 world. 



The mere mechanical arts are but the secondary results 

 of science, and as accumulating facts, though necessarily 

 laborious, are the first step towards eliminating truth ; let us 

 therefore sturdily arm ourselves to the acquisition of them, 

 forgetting even what has been termed the sublimity of 

 deductive philosophy, in the no less honourable, but no less 

 arduous and valuable, efibrts of the practical experimentalist. 



Such laboms, ever pursued under difficulties, seldom 

 rewarded commensurately Avith their importance, it shall be 

 our duty and our interest to facilitate ; and while thus striving 

 for these ends let us endeavour to secure, by singleness of 

 purpose and unity of action, the general sympathy. 



