Natural History Society of Montreal. 147 



you. But, coming from the United States, where you believe or 

 at least are wont to say we are in advance of you in natural 

 science, it would be a great gratification to me, if, by appearing 

 here on this occasion, I could give any encouragement to a 

 society like this, having for its object the advancement of natural 

 science — a study to which I have devoted 30 years of my life, 

 with scarcely a thought of anything else. It is aiw T ays very 

 gratifying to me to meet an assembly of persons who are engaged 

 in advancing, or who are doing anything to advance the cause 

 of natural science. With us in the United States any organi- 

 zation of societies for the advancement of natural science reaches 

 but a little way into the last century. A few years prior to the 

 commencement of the present century, a few gentlemen, meeting 

 in Philadelphia in the back office of a druggist's store, organized 

 the Philadelphia Academy of natural science, which is now a 

 most flourishing institution, possessing the largest natural history 

 collection of any society in the United States. I believe about the 

 same period the society which now bears the name of the Albany 

 Institute was organized. At Albany we have three societies, 

 having objects different but yet closely related the one to the 

 other. We have one organized for the advancement of natural 

 history, another for agriculture, another for arts and manufactures, 

 and when w 7 e look to our records, we find that all kept equal 

 pace in improvement. There the cast-iron ploughshare was 

 invented, and improvements in that art on which we all depend 

 for our subsistence went hand in hand with discoveries in natural 

 science. The organization of our agricultural societies dates 

 from almost the same period as the organization of our natural 

 history societies, and the improvement of agricultural engines has 

 kept pace with the progress of science. In other cities too of 

 the United States, we have societies formed for the advancement 

 of natural science in all its departments. \ our society had a 

 more recent origin, and you can give good account of the years 

 of its existence by what it has already done. Your collections 

 are already very important, and I am enabled to say so from a 

 close personal examination, this not being the first occasion that 

 I have seen them. You have already brought together very 

 valuable materials to form the nucleus of that more extensive 

 collection which would fully represent the natural history of entire 

 Canada. And, as I have observed from the remarks of your 

 president, you are fully alive to the advantages in this respect of 



