Inaugural Address

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 24, 1891, Unnumbered Page

1. Address by the President. Abstract. Mr. Tregear commenced by congratulating Sir James Hector on receiving the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He then referred to the recent reported discovery of the bones of the Dinornis in Queensland, and remarked that soundings recently taken showed solid land once to have existed from New Zealand to Australia, and through the Malay Archipelago to Asia. Whether the moa had been evolved from the emu by gradual transformation, or the emu from the moa, would be for the geologists and naturalists to discuss. The President then referred to the theories as to man's origin, whether from a single pair or from many sources; described the primitive state of the human race, with the progress upward from the cave-dwellers to the pastoral peoples, then to cultivators of the soil, then to dwellers in cities. Referring to the question of marriage, he described the emergence of the communal form into the slave period, and thus to the belief in the wife being the private property of the husband. He then called attention to the agreement between anthropology and the other sciences as to the great lapse of time necessary for mankind to have existed and to have passed through the palæolithic and neolithic periods to the building of great cities, which we now know to have been in existence six thousand years ago. Great portions of Asia and Africa, fertile, and abounding in all descriptions of animal and vegetable life, were still unsettled. Many extracts from the reports of travellers just returned from these wilds were quoted to show the adaptability of those places to the uses of the emigrant. The President, however, did not believe that the colonisation of Africa and other places in the possession of native races was as practicable as was generally believed. The enormous fecundity of the dark races, if relieved of the checks caused by bloodshed and war, would inevitably squeeze out the incomers, and prevent men of high organization existing in force sufficient to control the lower and more persistent racial types. Mr. Tregear concluded by expressing his opinion that the future of the world was not so entirely in the hands of intellectual nations as he had once thought; but, if the advance of mankind was threatened by the overflow of barbaric peoples, he trusted that the time of submersion would be short, and the world soon resume its path of progress, refreshed and invigorated with new and stronger life.

Sir James Hector, in proposing a vote of thanks to the President for his most interesting address, reminded members that within the last few months they had been indebted to Mr. Tregear for a most useful addition to New Zealand scientific literature in his comparative “Dictionary of the Polynesian Languages.” His address showed that outside mere philology Mr. Tregear was able to take a wide grasp of the great problem of anthropology. With the President's permission he took this opportunity of introducing Professor Pond, who had just arrived from Cambridge to take the classical chair in the New Zealand University at Auckland. Professor Pond considered it a high honour that he should, on his first landing, have the opportunity of attending the meeting of such a Society. He complimented Mr. Tregear on the admirable arrangement of his new dictionary—the method was excellent. He was told at Cambridge before leaving that he ought to consider it a high privilege, his being selected for his appointment in the New Zealand University, as the examiners in England thought most highly of the work done by the New Zealand students. Mr. Travers seconded the vote of thanks, which was carried, and spoke in flattering terms of the able manner in which Mr. Tregear treated the subject of his address.