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the hours which I have spent in accomplishing the little of which I am 

 capable, as a member of the Field Naturalists' Club of the City of 

 Ottawa, an organizition which, I am happy to say, numbers within its 

 circle of membership, many able and scientific men. It seems to me 

 that we have been placed upon this earth for the purpose of doing all 

 the good we can to our fellow-beings in our day and generation. The 

 public benefactor, whoever he may be, and whatever niiy be his talents, 

 his i)owers or his influence for good, will always find his most grati- 

 fying reward in the contemplation of the progress, prosperity, enlight- 

 ment or happiness, which ' he has been directly or indirectly, 

 iristrumental in promoting. He may be gifted with genius he may 

 be endowed with talent, yet he is deserving of no personal credit for 

 the j.ossession of either. But, if he has cherished, guarded and 

 nurtured the celestial spark committed to his charge, until it has grown 

 and expanded into a living flame, which has developed and brightened 

 his own intelligence, and proved a beacon to guide the earnest searcher 

 after truth, he is entitled to ever;y honour and commendation for having 

 nt least endeavoured to accomplish the manifest behests of his own 

 destiny. 



That we have had in the past, and that we now have, amongst the 

 throbbing millions of tliis vast world, great and gifted men in every 

 branch of human industry, and in every avenue of human thought and 

 human action, is due alone to the wonder-working })ower of that Om- 

 nipotent Hand that planted the firmament with the sun, the moon, the 

 stars and the planets that studded the arched equator of the blue 

 ocean of the heavens with the glittering islands of the Milky Way; that 

 clothed the earth with verdure and beauty ; that laid the foundations of 

 the mountains and fashioned " the Everlasting Hills ;" that intersected 

 terrestrial space with rivers and streams, and capped the towering 

 climax of immeasurable might by infusing the resistless spirit of limit- 

 less aspiration into that mysteriously sublime something called the 

 human soul. Here the finite is lost in the magnitude of the infinite ! 

 The most gifted, the most learned one of human kind, when he seeks 

 to unravel the mystery of his own natuj'e, pauses when he is confronted 

 by God, and shrinks abashed before the majesty of the Incomprehensible ! 



