and of the affiliated Societies, the establishment of which it will encourage in all our chief centres of population. And here I must observe that the Government has been very fortunate in securing for this important office the proved ability and judgment, the wide experience, and the untiring energy of Dr. Hector, F.R.S. It is to him that we are mainly indebted for the valuable collections of art and science already accumulated in these halls; and he will always be ready to give his advice and assistance in the formation of Museums in our principal towns. Co-operation is the secret of success in all scientific pursuits; and the New Zealand Institute, while leaving its affiliated Societies unfettered in the performance of their separate functions, will publish their chief transactions on a uniform plan, thereby concentrating the information collected by local observers throughout the country, and providing for the preservation, in a permanent and accessible form, of the result of their labours. It should not be forgotten that the New Zealand Exhibition of 1865, held at Dunedin, was an effort in the same direction; and that, if we may judge from the reports, it appears to have been very successful in procuring much novel and accurate information respecting the natural resources of this colony.
And now, gentlemen, I congratulate you on already possessing, in this Public Museum and Library, facilities for that moral and intellectual culture without which no advantages of genius or of wealth can confer personal happiness, and no political privileges can secure immunity from national decay. Lord Bacon, the prince of philosophers, "il gran Maestro di color die sanno" in the modern, as Dante said of Aristotle in the ancient world, has pronounced that "Knowledge is power," and also that "Knowledge is pleasure." So too, Milton, the prince of modern poets, has sung,—
How charming is Divine Philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute:
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.[1]
Still, let me remind you that the main object of the Legislature in founding this Institute was not merely to make provision for healthy intellectual recreation, but rather to provide guidance and aid for the people of New Zealand in subduing and replenishing the earth,—in the "heroic work" of colonization.
The field of science may be compared to a clearing in one of our primeval forests, where the more trees a settler fells, the greater appears the expanse of wood around him; and it might almost be said that every colonist in a new and unexplored country is, unconsciously, more or less of a scientific
