This committee presented their report and rules at a general meeting held, not on 24 June, but on 31 July, and without amendment they were unanimously approved. The laws were based on the observation of the working of similar bodies elsewhere, the main principles of the British Association for the Advancement of Science being used as a model. The first office bearers were—

The inaugural conversazione of the Institute was held in the Mechanics Institution on 22 September 1854 with the President in the Chair. In his inaugural address, the Acting Chief Justice, Mr Justice Barry, summed up the position in his opening sentence—'We assemble in the vestibule of the Temple of Science, many of us unacquainted one with the other, invited to engage in a course of mutual improvement, and to assist in the cause of general instruction'. Throughout the room were ranged contributions by members, some 33 in all, representative of the objects of the Institute. They varied from cases of gold specimens, to physical and chemical apparatus, to the prize design for Government House, to a model of a steam ferry, to statues. A series of short lectures by such men as Dr Mueller, Dr Maund and Mr W. S. Gibbons concluded the inaugural conversazione.

At the ordinary meeting held the following week, five sections of the Institute were formed, viz.—sanitary economy, engineering, political economy, chemistry, and microscopic investigations. The membership by this time had grown to 82.

Royal Society of Victoria