satisfaction from witnessing the efforts made at all the principal centres of population. Each province has its own peculiar advantages; but on this occasion I wish to allude especially to that garden which forms an essential adjunct to our Institute. It is now a little more than a year since the Botanic Reserve was placed under the management of the Board of Governors, and there is good reason to be satisfied with the advance already secured. Not only has the luxury of a pleasant recreation ground been conferred on the inhabitants of Wellington, and on the numerous visitors who reside here during the sessions of the Colonial Parliament, but a field has also been provided for interesting experiments in practical botany. The preservation of the beautiful patches of native forest, which still survive in the ravines, and the affixing the names of the various trees and shrubs, have created, at a small expense, a Botanic Garden of the most useful kind. Visitors are thus enabled to render themselves familiar with the indigenous vegetation of this country, with its scientific classification, and with the beauty and value of the flora of this and of other lands.
CHEMISTRY.
In the department of Chemistry, nearly all the papers are by Mr. Skey, the Analyst to the Geological Survey of New Zealand; and the Institute is fortunate in possessing among its members a gentleman so well qualified to handle this branch of science.
GEOLOGY.
We must all deplore the loss by drowning, while in the zealous discharge of his duty, of another officer of the Government Survey—Mr. E. H. Davis—to whom our Transactions owe several instructive geological papers.
On the above, and on a variety of miscellaneous subjects, we have a number of interesting contributions by Dr. Hector, Dr. Haast, Mr. Travers, Captain Hutton, and others of our leading associates. The last, but by no means the least important paper in the third volume of our Transactions is the opportune lecture, by Mr. Justice Chapman, on the "Political Economy of Railways," which will excite the more interest from the fact that the Colony is now about to undertake extensive public works, such as those of which the learned Judge has so ably treated.
On the whole, it may be safely affirmed that the Institute has no reason to be dissatisfied with the amount of work which it has accomplished during the first three years of its existence; and if we look to the large accession to its numbers during the past year, and to the interest which its labours have excited, alike in this and in the neighbouring colonies and in the mother country, we may confidently regard the progress already made as only the germ and infant promise of a far greater development and success in the future.
