Page:Inaugural address, delivered before the members of the Victorian Institute, on Friday the 21st of September, 1854 (IA inauguraladdres00barr).pdf/11

7 The construction, the features, the products, the deficiencies, the wants of this, country demand, and must exact, scientific innovation to suit, adapt, repair or supply it and them; and if within the recollection of some present, a Fulton, unestimated in his native city, lived to see his bathed projects ripened in a foreign land, and the waters of the western hemisphere crowded with vessels incessantly propelled by the impulse of a slighted mechanism and a distrusted might, is it presumptuous to imagine that this genial southern sun may hasten into birth some unrevealed combination of forces, the rudiment of which, as yet, lies in the brain of one amongst us; hitherto unsmiled on by the favour of his own compatriots, ungladdened by the approving voice of his own countrymen?

This is surely then a time when every effort to rivet attention on the culture of art and science should be heartily seconded. A strong desire for knowledge is manifested in the foundation of our University—the establishment of libraries, and the formation of the numerous societies springing up in our towns, their suburbs, and the more distant districts. All this points to prove that the barren acquisition of money does not satisfy the cravings of a people who possess a comprehension beyond that of the method of acquiring it; and that if such appetite be once created that people will demand something more than simple didactic information.

As to the benefits to be derived from the establishment of this institution, they are incalculable, and an attempted enumeration of them would be alike unnecessary and incomplete. What rather must they not be when an account of the natural and physical resources of the country is untouched by any hand we may strictly call our own; when the different branches which treat of the mineral stores hidden within the earth, the vegetation which luxuriates, the insects, reptiles, animals which move upon its surface, the fish which swim in its waters, the fowls which float in its air, invoke especial systematic notice; when the annals of atmospheric and climatic changes continue unnoted, and when a faithful narration of the few but eventful years of the occupation of this soil by Europeans is unwritten?