MEMOIR 
24 
associates of that period and includes an excellent protrait 
of Moseley. 
Arrived in Australia, Spencer immediately submits plans 
to the Council of his University for a new laboratory and 
fittings; ‘for which people in general say I may “whistle”, 
but I am not myself quite of this opinion/ Three months 
later he announces joyfully: ‘Government has given me 
£5,000 towards my buildings, and with perhaps £2,000 
more from the University I shall make a beginning/ By 
February 1888, he can say: T have been looking after the 
erection of my new buildings, having got £8,000 with a 
promise of some £5,000 more next year. They will be really 
good when complete—in fact, quite as good as the Owens 
Biological Department and in some respects better; and these 
are the best in England/ Thereupon for the best part of 
a decade he is fully occupied at Melbourne with teaching and 
organizing. In September 1898 he goes to Sydney to in¬ 
augurate the Australian Association for Science, and we note 
that, whereas a while ago he was sighing for European 
scenery, he can now exclaim: ‘the harbour is perfect, and 
even though Naples has Vesuvius I think Sydney with its 
numberless coves and wooded hills is even better still/ In 
July 1900 he writes: ‘Being so far from England I had almost 
given up the idea of the F.R.S., but am very glad to have 
it/ Later, he is proposing to get the National Museum into 
order, since ‘there is nothing like trying to arrange a big 
collection for revealing to you your colossal ignorance'. In 
short, Australia has conquered him, and he in his turn is 
thinking out how best he may conquer Australia. For 
‘Australia has at all events the great advantage that there is 
no end of pioneer work to be done, and work which, in 
anthropology at least, must be done soon if it is to be done 
at all'. 
Field-activities, indeed, had always appealed to him, and 
