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170 classic and the standard authority on the subject with which it deals.

Much as he had enjoyed his travels in Europe and his visit, after so many years, to the scenes of his youth, he was glad to return to his Australian home; and he now threw himself with the energy and enthusiasm of youth into his botanical and petrological studies, which the composition of his great book on the Australian natives had compelled him for a time to intermit. He cherished the hope of writing a comprehensive work on the eucalyptus trees of Victoria, and another on the rocks of Gippsland, which no man knew so well as he. But these hopes were not destined to be fulfilled. During the last years of his life he was much concerned by certain misapprehensions and misrepresentations, as he conceived them to be, of facts relating to the Australian aborigines to which currency had been given both in Australia and Europe, and he took great pains to correct these misapprehensions and to give wide publicity to his corrections. These things absorbed some of his time, and in 1907 he was called on to preside over the meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science at Adelaide. In his Presidential Address he dealt with his reminiscences of exploration in Central Australia, particularly his expeditions to rescue the lost explorers and to bring back their remains. In previous years he had presided over the Ethnological and Geographical Sections of the Association, and had been awarded the first Mueller medal for his many distinguished contributions to Australian science. In the previous year (1906) a Companionship of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (C.M.G.), had been conferred upon him in recognition of his services to the State as well as to learning.

So, full of years and honours, he returned to his home at Metung in January, 1907. The even tenour of his studious life was pleasantly diversified by one or two