igoi] Ami — Annual Address. 201 



"Oh ! may I join your club ? " " I'm not scientific enoug^h to 

 join your Club ! " " Can I really join your Club?" 



Certainly you can join the Club ; any lover of Nature or 

 student of the Natural Sciences ought to join our Club, and the 

 sooner we see our membership roll increased, and the readers of 

 The Ottawa Naturalist also increase in their interest in its 

 pages, the sooner will our city awaken to the fact that we are in 

 the midst of a most charming locality, full of attractions and use- 

 ful studies in all branches of natural history and geology. There 

 is plenty of work for the Club on all sides, whether we concen- 

 trate on our special locality, Ottawa, or whether we deal with 

 notes and observations on other parts of Canada. The work 

 carried on by the Royal Society of Canada in our midst, by the 

 Ottaiva Literary and Scientific Society, by the French Canadian 

 Institute, by the St Patrick's Literary and Scientific Society, by the 

 Scientific Society 0/ Ottawa University, possibly the youngest of 

 our sister societies, has its place, and Ottawa is all the better for 

 these organizations. We are all trying to plant thoughts. May 

 they grow and multiply. 



It is not my purpose to detain you very long this evening. I 

 have not prepared any elaborate address such as I would have 

 wished for, on an occasion of this kind. In its stead I have brought 

 together a few words regarding two persons, one, a great 

 Canadian scientist, twenty-four years gone to his rest ; the other 

 a member of our Club, but a few months, gone, whose loss we oft- 

 times feel, for we miss him at our excursions and his familiar face 

 is no longer with us, 



Archibald Lampman. 



The issue of that simple, chaste but excellent volume of poems 

 from the pen of Archibald Lampman, recalls a duty unaccomplish- 

 ed by us at our last annual inaugural meeting. I refer to the too 

 early demise of our friend and fellow member, the sweet poet of 

 Ottawa, Archibald Lampman. 



It was on the loth day of February, 1899, that he was taken 

 from us, the result of too severe a strain upon his delicate con- 

 stitution some three years previous, followed by a severe attack of 

 pneumonia two^days prior to his death. His ardent love of Nature 



