268 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



Our medium of publication, The Ottawa Naturalist, which 

 constitutes and includes the Transactions of the Ottawa Field- 

 Naturalists' Club, has been regularly published since 1880. In its 

 13 volumes there are more than 2000 pages of text, and there may 

 be found stores of information bearing upon local natural history, in 

 which the economic as well as the scientific side of the subject is 

 recorded. It is not my purpose to shower encomiums or praise 

 on the workers of the Club for what they have accomplished. The 

 pleasure and interest as well as the health and exercise derived 

 from such researches are sufficient remuneration for whatever 

 toil, trouble and drudgery they may have experienced. To 

 develop the powers of observation and comparison in man there is 

 no better occupation. It is excellent training for the mind as well 

 as the body. 



One feature of the Club's work to which I need scarcely draw 

 your attention is in connection with the educational institutions of 

 the city. It is very gratifying to the executive of the Ottawa 

 Field-Naturalists' Club to have our meetings and excursions prove 

 of interest to those engaged in training the mind. We are pleased 

 also to have the good-will of the worthy principal of the Normal 

 School — Dr. MacCabe — who has always been a friend of the Club. 

 It is one of the ambitions ol the Club to assist in a measure not 

 only to awaken a live interest in natural history researches, but 

 also to build up a reference collection of specimens illustrating the 

 recent as well as extinct faunas and floras in the Ottawa district, 

 so that the students of botany, entomology, conchology and 

 geology, as well as ethnology can have access to it for the sake 

 of comparison. 



We are pleased to see that already a number of collections 

 have been donated by various members ot the Club to form the 

 nucleus of such a usetul series. The best thanks of the Club are 

 due to Dr. MacCabe for the use of this fine Assembly Hall for 

 three evenings of the course of winter sorr^es. 



tribute to the late e. billings. 



It was my purpose at one time to give you this evening a 

 short paper on the more important localities where the most inter- 

 esting geological phenomena may be studied to advantage about 



