472 president's address. 



some observations on a prevalent opinion, that the natural sciences 

 are immensely more popular in the present day than ever they 

 have been at any previous epoch in the world's history. I 

 question, however, if the opinion is quite correct in the ordinary 

 sense of the word popular. If we mean that there are more 

 students of the scientific aspect of the subject, or that such works 

 address a larger section of the reading public, it is certainly not 

 correct. That books on natural history are more numerous is 

 true, and that they are cheaper and of a better class is also true. 

 This is in keeping with the general inprovement which has taken 

 place in all departments of literature. There has grown up 

 likewise a class of books on the subject which was unknown 

 before the present century, or even in the beginning of it. These 

 are what are called popular books, meant for those who have no 

 time or no inclination for more than light reading. But the 

 scientific students are still few, and those who interest themselves 

 in their labours are confined to a very small circle. We find this 

 especially the case in our efforts to advance a Society like our 

 own, which aims at purely scientific investigation. 



The sympathy and support we get is of the most limited kind. 

 Our public journals are prof use in their references to the scientific 

 tendencies of the age. Scarcely a meeting or a public discussion 

 is there in which some vaunting allusion is not made to the 

 progress of knowledge, and our intellectual achievements. This 

 as far as it goes, is a sign of some sort of appreciation in which 

 the labours of a few are held. But we have to be content with 

 this. The self-sacrificing workers must find the reward for their 

 labours in the pleasure their studies give them — a pleasure, let 

 it be admitted which in most cases compensates them for all else. 

 The public generally will scarcely encourage them by even an 

 interest in their work. All this is strongly evidenced by a 

 reference to the past volumes of this Society. We find on 

 inspecting their tables of contents that scarcely more than a 

 dozen contributors have supplied the investigations which are 



