APPENDIX. 
CIRCULAR ISSUED BY THE COUNCIL. 
Certain circumstances connected with the passing of the vote for 
the Acclimatisation Society have led the Council to consider it 
desirable to state a few facts relating to their performance of the 
duties with which they have been charged. 
The Estimates were laid upon the table of the Assembly on the 
3rd February. Ou the 4th, suni3 amounting to £1,408,515 were 
voted. Amongst other items was that of £4,000 for the acclimatisa¬ 
tion Society, the granting of which was coupled with a condition 
that £650 should be raised by private subscriptions. 
From the responsibility of that condition the Council have no 
desire to shrink, feeling well aware that from the wide feeling of 
sympathy with their efforts, a demaud can be met, which might have 
been fatal to almost any other institution receiving Government aid. 
The debate ou the vote, and the condition accompanying it, how¬ 
ever, have led the Council to believe that their transactions are less 
fully understood than they would wish them to be, and the rapidity 
with which the Estimates were proceeded with took them so far by 
surprise as to have prevented them from providing the Government 
with such statement of their proceedings as would, they believe, have 
convinced the Legislature not only that the money voted was being 
well spent, but that no other public money is being expended to 
better advantage. 
The acclimatisation, or rather the introduction and assimilation to 
a new set of conditions, of every good thing that the world contains, 
to a country so singularly adapted as Australia to a wide range of 
products, seems about as legitimate an enterprise as can be con¬ 
ceived. 
The gathering together in good condition and in sufficent numbers 
to establish the species, foreign animals and plants, is necessarily a 
very slow and delicate process, and much time must obviously be 
expended before very decided results can be expected. Most of 
these animals breed only once a year, and their natural increase is 
therefore tardy, however eminently they may prove themselves 
adapted to their new home. But a brief outline of what is being 
done will be found not altogether barren of those results, for the 
fuller elaboration of which it is only reasonable to wait. 
