148 Natural History Society of Montreal. 



your geographical position, accessible alike from the sea-board, 

 from the South, and from the West, so that with you the forma- 

 tion of a cabinet of natural science in all its departments would be a 

 matter of comparative ease. All that is necessary is that the 

 spirit which engages your interest in this society should be suffi- 

 ciently pervasive to enlist the services of a sufficient number who 

 shall devote themselves to the interests of science. That their 

 names should be famous ought not to be their object. With the 

 man who cultivates science, truth as manifested in nature should 

 be the object of his devotion, himself entirely forgotten. There- 

 fore, if you would advance science, forget yourself. However 

 much or however little you may contribute to its treasures, never 

 allow yourself to be prominent. Every intelligent person can do 

 something in this way. If his time or means do not permit 

 original investigation, he can contribute to collections. Every 

 one can do that, and every little goes to build up the great mass. 

 We should all contribute something towards building up the 

 temple of science, so that those who come after us may acknow- 

 ledge that those who went before them did not live in vain. 

 (Applause.) There is one point which you can more readily 

 appreciate than we in the United States, because you are more 

 directly connected with our parent country. It is a new country 

 which we inhabit, which we are filling with the fruits of civiliza- 

 tion, and on whose soil we are fixing ourselves, establishing homes 

 like those which we or our forefathers left on the other side. We 

 have here too a new soil — not only a new country but a new soil, 

 clothed with a vegetation entirely different from that we left 

 across the Atlantic. Natural history embraces this soil and all 

 its products, and not only the soil but the rocks from which it is 

 derived, the plants and trees which it grows, and the animals 

 which roam over its surface. Man at his beo-innino- on the earth 

 had nature made subservient to him, and we still are unable to 

 subsist without those means which were more spontaneously 

 supplied by nature to our early parents. Man depends for his 

 subsistence on surrounding animals and plants, and he is unable 

 to live separate or apart from them. Man is not a separate and 

 individual creation, made to subsist separately. But the point I 

 am coming to is this. We have brought from the other side of 

 the Atlantic our domestic animals and fruits, on which our fore- 

 fathers were fed and nourished. We bring them and plant them 

 on this soil, and just in proportion as we know the character of 



