THE 



CANADIAN NATURALIST 



AND 



MODERN IDEAS OF DERIVATION. 



Address of Principal Dawson, as President of the Natural History 

 Society of Montreal. Read at the Annual Meeting, May 18th, 

 1869. 



The sphere of tliis Society as a modest collector and preserver 

 of local facts in Natural History, does notpreclude its glancing at 

 the more difficult and abstruse questions which agitate Naturalists 

 elsewhere ; and perhaps no place is more fitting for this than tlie 

 annual address of the President. I propose, therefore, on the 

 present occasion, to direct your attention to the present state of 

 those exciting questions agitated in our day by Geologists, 

 Zoologists and Botanists, as to the origin of Species and Genera, 

 and the law of their creation. 



Time was when Naturalists were content to take nature as they 

 found it, without any over curious inquiries as to the origin of 

 its several parts, or the changes of which they might be sus- 

 ceptible in time. Geology first removed this pleasant state of 

 repose, by showing that all our present species had a beginning, 

 and were preceded by others, and these again by others. 

 Geologists were, however, too much occupied with the facts of 

 their science to speculate on the ultimate causes of the appearance 

 and disappearance of species, and it remained for Zoologists and 

 Botanists, or as some prefer to call themselves. Biologists, to 

 construct hypotheses or theories to account for the ascertained 

 fact that successive dynasties of species have succeeded each 

 Vol. IV. I No. 2. 



