Ill 



The club contribution to the exhibition last summer was not as 

 full an exhibit of the club work as I would have liked. Several mem- 

 bers on whom the committee relied for assistance were absent from the 

 city, and their collections were not available. Notwithstanding this 

 drawback, the space allotted to us was a great centre of attraction to 

 visitors. Mr. Fletcher's magnificent collection of foreign butterflies, 

 injurious insects, and Ottawa butterflies, Mr. Latchford's cases of shells, 

 Mr. G. R. White's birds, Mr. Bell's great mineral display, along with 

 the botanical collections, made a display of which we have every I'easoh 

 to be proud. 



It has often occurred to me while observing the working of the 

 Club during the last three or four years, that in some respects it has 

 become too mechanical for the best results, not only as far as the efieets 

 on our members is concerned, but for the cause we all have at heart, 

 the study and cultivation of a love for natural history. To confine 

 myself to the section I know most about, that of botany. As you are 

 aware, the Council at its first meeting after election appoints two or 

 three membei-s to be leaders in each department, whose duties are to 

 arrange excursions, look after the interest of the branch, and make a 

 report at the end of the year of the work done duties which, as a rule, 

 are performed with most commendable zeal and efficiency. But though 

 most valuable results have flowed from the system since its inauguration 

 eight years ago, I cannot but think some serious drawbacks attend it, 

 the princi])al being the tendency to weaken the spontaneous work of 

 the other members. I think I see a disposition to lean too much on 

 the leaders. At our excursions, for instance, maiiy of our young bot- 

 anists who make collections are too ready to get the whole work of 

 naming their specimens done for them by the leaders a plan which 1 

 need hardly say will never make them botanists. There is all the 

 difference in the world between the knowledge one has of a plant he 

 has got named by some one else and one that he has ferreted out for 

 himself; and it is only when he fails to find it out that he should call 

 on the leaders for assistance. Others carry this dependence still further, 

 and do not collect at all, expecting that the leaders will have done so, 

 and that they will get the names of the plants they have seen at the 

 close of the outing ; and the knowledge that this assistance can so 



