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Presidential Address.
The following is the presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Zealand Institute at Wellington, 29th January, 1913, by Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, F.L.S., F.Z.S., Curator of the Auckland Museum:—
Gentlemen of the Board of Governors,—The expiry of another year has again made it necessary for me to prepare a short address dealing with the position of the Institute and the work which it has performed since we last met. And, as this is the last occasion on which I shall occupy this chair, I wish to thank you for the kindly support that has been awarded to me, and for the considerate indulgence shown to my many shortcomings.
In the address which I had the honour of placing before you last year I stated that the financial position of the Institute was causing great anxiety to those who had the management of its affairs; that it was no longer possible to print the Transactions for the amount of the annual grant of £500; and that the Institute was practically in debt to the Government Printer for a sum which I estimated at £155, but which proved to be nearer £250. The obvious cure for this unsatisfactory condition of affairs was to obtain a permanent increase of the statutory grant, but as this cannot be done without an amendment of the New Zealand Institute Act it was decided to apply to Parliament for a supplementary grant of £250. In support of this application a deputation waited upon the Premier, and fully explained the position of affairs. It was shown that the statutory grant still stood at the amount fixed on the formation of the Institute in 1868, when the circumstances of the Dominion were very different from what they are now, and when the total membership amounted to only 178, a number widely different from the present roll of nearly 1,000. It is satisfactory to state that the deputation was sympathetically received, and that the proposed sum was placed upon the supplementary estimates, and, having received the sanction of Parliament, has since been duly paid to our Treasurer. I trust that this welcome addition to our funds may be shortly followed by a permanent enlargement of the annual grant.
The financial statement, which has already been circulated among you, shows that the total receipts of the Institute, including the balance of £389 18s. 8d. in hand at the beginning of the year, have been £1,229 5s. 2d. The total expenditure has been £1,078 3s. 9d., the two chief items being a sum of £648 12s. 6d. in payment of the cost of Vol. 43 of the Transactions, and one of £250 on account of Vol. 44. The balance in hand is given at £151 1s. 5d., but against this has to be placed the amount of £292 1s. due to the Government Printer on account of Vol. 44 of the Transactions. The Institute is thus in debt to the amount of £140 19s. 7d. But on the 31st March the annual subsidy of £500 will be payable, extinguishing the debt, and leaving a surplus of about £350. If the Institute is successful in obtaining a permanent addition to the statutory grant, or if a special grant be procured of equivalent amount to that voted during the last session of Parliament, funds will be available for the issue of a volume of Transactions of average size; but without additional income there will still remain an indebtedness to the Government Printer.
Vol. 44 of the Transactions, which has been issued during the year, is considerably smaller than its predecessor, the reason being the necessity of reducing our printer's bill as much as possible. I find that the volume contains 594 pages, of which 460 belong to the Transactions and 134 to the Proceedings, including in this latter term all matter supplementary to the Transactions. The number of separate papers is forty, but seventeen short communications appear in the Proceedings, making a total of fifty-seven. In the index the number of plates is given as twenty-four, but many illustrations appear in the text which are not included in that total. The previous volume (43) contained 808 pages, of which 680 are referable to the Transaction and 128 to the Proceedings. The number of articles (including twenty-five notes or abstracts given in the Proceedings) amounted to eighty-two, and the plates numbered thirty-two. It will therefore be noticed that the reduction in the size of Vol. 44 is entirely confined to the Transactions, which contains 220 pages fewer than in Vol. 43. I think we all regret that the necessary economy in publication has been effected at the expense of the most important portion of the volume; but, in justice to the Editors, I must state that the reason for this is that the greater part of the Proceedings were in type before the financial position of the Institute was fully known. As for the total cost of the volume, the financial statement shows that the amount charged by the Government Printer has been £542 1s. So far as I can ascertain, this shows
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a saving of slightly over £100 on the cost of the volume for the previous year, which was £648 12s. 6d.
At the last meeting of this Board a motion was adopted to the effect that the separate publication of the Proceedings should be discontinued if the Government declined to increase the statutory grant. As no decision of the Government was available until the month of October, it was found impossible to issue any part of the Proceedings in advance of Vol. 45 of the Transactions, now being printed, and they will consequently appear together, as was the uniform practice until a few years ago. Personally, I trust that no attempt will be made to revive the plan of issuing the Proceedings in parts in advance of the Transactions proper, especially as it inevitably leads to greatly increased expenditure on the least important part of the Institute's publications. As I remarked in my address of last year, the greater part of the material printed therein is of ephemeral value. No particular interest and no scientific importance can be attached to the minutes of the meetings of the various incorporated Societies; and the abstracts given of scientific papers printed outside the Dominion need not be nearly so long as many of those which have been printed. In most cases the title of the memoir and the name of the publication in which it appears is all that is required. And any short papers which possess permanent value should form part of the Transactions proper, and should not be consigned to the comparative obscurity of the Proceedings. Almost a quarter of the last-issued volume is composed of the Proceedings, a proportion which appears to be extravagantly large. In my opinion, it would be far better to cease publishing the Proceedings altogether, and to apply the funds thus saved to the quarterly or half-yearly publication of the Transactions.
The report of the Publication Committee, which has been duly placed before you, contains several matters which require careful attention. I quite agree with the Committee in considering that the list of earthquakes recorded in New Zealand in each year should find a place in the Transactions, in which such lists were printed for many years in succession. Their absence from recent volumes has to my own knowledge caused inconvenience to several inquirers.
The suggestion made that Mr. H. N. Dixon's papers on the Mosses of the Dominion should be published in bulletin form will, I hope, be favourably entertained by the Board. The opportunity of having a practical review of our moss flora made by an acknowledged authority at no expense beyond the cost of publication is not one which should be allowed to pass by. The proposal to print Major Broun's papers in bulletin form stands in a precisely similar position. After the highly favourable report on the character of his work placed before the Board last year it is certainly desirable that his papers should be printed as rapidly as the funds of the Institute will allow.
The reference made to the uncertain practice of authors in citing the annual volumes of Transactions should be followed by some definite action. Why should not a clause drawing attention to the facts be inserted in the “Memorandum for Authors of Papers” which is now regularly prefixed to the Transactions? As matters are at present, the incorrect practice of quoting the year during which the paper is read, instead of the year of publication, causes much unnecessary trouble, and gives rise to wrong ideas on questions of priority.
Among the reports presented to you is one from Mr. Hamilton, as Librarian of the Institute. Now, I need say but little about the condition of the library. We all know that it is most inadequately housed and inconveniently arranged; that it is stored in a wooden building that might any day be destroyed by fire; that it requires the constant care and attention of some competent person. To my mind, the present state of the library is a disgrace to both the Government and the Institute, and should be rectified as soon as possible. Mr. Hamilton has suggested that the Institute should support the proposal made to Parliament in the report of the Museum and Scientific Departments Committee, where it is recommended that the whole of the scientific literature belonging to the Government, together with the library of the Institute, should be conjoined to form a general library of scientific works. There is much to be said in favour of such a scheme, for the Institute is without any funds from which it could erect a library building of its own; in fact, it cannot even provide for the proper superintendence of its library. The subject is a little complicated on account of the number of independent libraries which it is proposed to include in the scheme, and also from the uncertainty respecting the ownership of some of the books; but these are difficulties which tact and careful negotiation would probably remove. In any case, the subject has to be faced, and I commend the report to your earnest consideration.
I regret that I have no fresh information of my own respecting the proposed visit of the British Association in 1914. I understand, however, that two members of this Board who have recently visited Sydney have had an interview with the
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Commonwealth Government on the subject, and that the matter has also been discussed at the meeting of the Australasian Association. I hope that these gentlemen may be able to furnish us with some idea of the shape that the proposed visit will eventually take. It is possible, however, that the final arrangements will not be made until the meeting of the British Association to be held in Birmingham next September.
In the report of the Standing Committee there is a reference to the excessive cost incurred in printing certain papers in Vol. 43 of the Transactions, and a suggestion is made that after this year the Publication Committee should submit to the annual meeting an estimate of the cost of publishing each paper selected for the annual volume. While not desirous of unduly hampering the actions of the Publication Committee, I am decidedly of opinion that it is the duty of this Board to exercise a closer superintendence over the expenditure on the annual volume. To make the reason for this clear, I will remark that Vol. 43 of the Transactions cost £648; that in the same year the printing of the general index to the first forty volumes cost £60; and that there was an additional payment of £28 for part of the Proceedings. In other words, the printer's bill for the year amounted to no less than £736, or £236 in excess of the annual subsidy Now, I do not say that the printing represented by this large sum was not of advantage to the Institute, or that the material printed was unworthy of publication; but I do hold that no committee, without previous authority from the Board of Governors, should incur an expenditure so largely in excess of the revenue of the Institute. In making this statement I am anxious that it should be fully understood that I am quite sensible of the services that successive Publication Committees have rendered to the Institute, and that I am fully convinced that they have acted with a sincere desire to further its objects. But granting all that, there are so many objections which can be raised to unauthorized expenditure of the kind that I have mentioned that it appears highly desirable that the Board of Governors, at each of its annual meetings, should vote some specified sum, or in some way indicate what amount should be expended in the publication of the annual volume.
Another important reason can be urged in support of this conclusion. The annual meeting of the Board of Governors is the only meeting where the representatives of the whole of the incorporated Societies can unite in discussing the affairs of the Institute and take part in the management of its work. In the interval between the annual meetings the conduct of affairs is entrusted partly to the Publication Committee, which is usually—and, I think, quite unnecessarily—confined to members of two, or at the most three, Societies, and partly to the Standing Committee, which is even more limited in its composition, for it practically consists of Wellington residents. No doubt there are difficulties in providing any other form of management, but these difficulties make it highly desirable that as much as possible of the work of the Institute in all its departments should be arranged for and ordered at the annual meeting of the Board of Governors.