Let us cast our eyes on the vivid picture which, as the beginning of future decorations of these walls, a friend equally talciited and generous has placed. before us. We recognise the greatest of Britain's exploring navigators, not bent on warfare's glory, but on the triumphs of more enduring conquests, boldly directing his vessels into waters unfurrowed by a keel before. His eagle eyes in inexpressible delight are glancing, like Columbus's, along the verdant shores of a new continent—a panorama of nature never before beheld by ally European's sight, is there expanding before him. His phantasy perceives cities arising on the virgin ground, sees millions crowded in activity where then the solitude of the wilderness prevailed, sees browsing herds and flocks on the then trackless pastures—the "harvest treasures" clothing hill and dale, sees anchoring the fleets of commerce in the peaceful waters of that romantic bay. The realisation of what the most vivid imagination brought before the vision of the immortal Cook, has been the work of much less than a century. This presage of Australia's future, we may well imagine, was the greatest reward which crowned his arduous labors—the richest jewel he took with him from these shores.

If since that period the gigantic strides made by civilisation have verified the highest expectations of a now bygone time, what marvels may not yet be revealed by the second century of Australia's colonisation? No longer shall we then remain almost exiled from the northern countries from whence our population sprang; no longer shall we then regard with mingled feelings of hope and dread the blanks of our geographic charts; no longer shall the tired traveller then stray waterless through inhospitable wastes; no longer shall, for many thousand miles, the coast of this great continent remain unoccupied by homesteads and settlements; no longer tracts of immense extent remain devoid of the harvest grain.

Royal Society of Victoria