observer. For example,—the first discovery of the mineral treasures which are now fast yielding up their riches to us,—of our coal, our gold, our copper, and our iron,—is due, not so much to scientific research, as to chance, if that term can be properly applied to any of the great dispensations of Providence. When such a variety of valuable minerals has been presented to our view, almost without design or exertion on the part of the earliest discoverers, what rich harvests of knowledge, what vast practical aid to the industrial arts, may be expected from the systematic exploration of the geology and mineralogy of this country! Our extensive coal fields are storehouses of wealth, which even now contribute in no slight degree towards our material welfare and our expanding commerce. What the future may bring forth it is not for man to foretell with confidence; but certainly coal has been the instrument by which the steam engine and others of the most wonderful inventions of modern times have been enabled to triumph over time and space. Again, I trust that industry, guided by science, will develop still further our gold fields. It should never be forgotten that, while the gold discoveries have accelerated by at least a hundred years what without them would have been the comparatively gradual progress of the Australasian group of colonies, they have also powerfully facilitated the removal of commercial restrictions and the advancement of social improvement in the parent State, adding immensely at the same time to the general trade and wealth of the British Empire and of the entire civilized world.
The geological survey of New Zealand, in addition to the practical advantages thereby secured to the existing settlers and their successors, will assist materially in solving many important and interesting problems in general science. To quote from the authoritative work of Dr. Hochstetter: "Not inhabited, probably, till within late centuries of the history of man, and then but thinly populated, and only along the coasts and along the banks of navigable rivers, New Zealand has fully preserved within its interior the originality and peculiarity of its remarkable animal and vegetable kingdoms up to our present time. No monuments of any kind, no tombs of kings, no ruins of cities, no time-honoured fragments of shattered palace domes and temples, are there to tell of the deeds of ages or nations past and gone. But Nature, through her mightiest agencies—through fire and water—has stamped her history in indelible characters on the virgin soil of the islands. The wild Alpine heights of the South, towering in silent grandeur to the sky, their lofty summits crested with fields of ice and decked with glacier robes; the volcanoes of the North, looming up into the regions of perpetual snow, glisten from afar, dazzling the wondering eyes of the mariner as he approaches the coast. Fertile and well watered alluvial plains are there awaiting the enterprising settler; a virgin soil, on which he founds a new
