224 Annual Meeting of the 



of Ga6p6; and 10 (not including these two) reappear in tte Car- 

 boniferous strata. The Devonian Flora is less perfectly preserved 

 than that of the Coal-measures, and is probably yet very imper- 

 fectly known. It presents more resemblance to the floras of the 

 Mesozoic period and of modem tropical and austral islands thatt 

 the coal-plants. The facies of the Devonian Flora in North 

 America is very similar to that of the same period in Europe. 



NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF MONTREAL. 



The Annual Meeting of this Society was held in their rooms 

 yesterday evening, the President, the Most Reverend the Lord 

 Bishop of Montreal and Metropolitan in the chair. A large at- 

 tendance of the members was present. The Recording Secretary, 

 Mr. John Leeming, read the minutes of the last meeting', after 

 which his Lordship the President said : 



Gentlemen, — It becomes my duty once more, on this occasion 

 of the Annual Meeting of our Society to give some account of 

 our proceedings during the past year. I confess that it is with 

 no small consciousness of my own unworthiness for the post I 

 occupy, that I now again address you as your President ; because 

 I cannot but feel that I have myself been able to do so very little 

 for the advancement of those objects, which it is the business of 

 Buch a Society to investigate and illustrate. I can however, most 

 truly lay claim to a warm interest in its success, to an anxious 

 desire to encourage in every way I can, the learned and useful 

 labours of others ; and I do most sincerely rejoice in being able 

 to congratulate you on the success of those labours, and the steady 

 advance which the Society is making in general usefulness, and 

 in the estimation of the public. The more direct and systematic 

 work of the Society is that which is done at the regular monthly 

 meetings of the members ; where papers are presented and read 

 upon any of those subjects which come at all within the purvieu 

 of this Institution ; and discussions and conversations take place 

 respecting them. As will necessarily be the case, where science 

 of any kind is the subject matter, these may not always be equally 

 interesting to the million, but are sometimes, as Hamlet says, 

 t' caviare to the general ;" yet they have been valuable, as contri- 

 butions to the cause of Natural Science, in almost every depart- 

 ment, and have been afterwards preserved and widely dissemin- 

 ated in the bi-monthly numbers of the Canadian Naturalist. 



