8 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
additional information as to the state of science education abroad, and 
to bring this to bear on the public mind here, as opportunity offered. 
“When I look back on the hopes and struggles of those earlier 
years, though I entertain a feeling of profound thankfulness to God for 
the measure of success and prosperity which has attended this 
University, and though I am most grateful to its many benefactors, I 
cannot forget the disappointment of my own hopes. Much has been 
done for general education, and McGill College has grown to be a 
comparatively great and prosperous institution. But all that I have 
done towards this any one could have done. The one thing that I could 
have done, for which I was willing to sacrifice all that I would have 
gained as an original worker in Geology, and which would have been 
of more real importance not only to Montreal, but to all this great 
country from Red River to Newfoundland, than all the rest, has not 
been done. I confess I often almost sink under the despairing feeling 
that it will not be done while I live; and that I may never have the 
opportunity of doing for this community the only great service that 
I believe myself competent to confer upon it. 
* Yet I know that much good preliminary work has been done, that 
material has been accumulated and tastes for science created; and I 
am reluctant to abandon the hope that I may yet see in Montreal a 
thoroughly equipped institution, in which any young man, with the 
requisite ability and preliminary education, may learn the scientific 
facts and principles and receive the training in scientific methods 
necessary to qualify him for mining, metallurgy, assaying und engineer- 
ing, agriculture, chemical manufactures, or other applications of science 
to art. Until this can be realized, I shall feel that the work of my 
life has been only very partially and imperfectly successful; and I shall 
know that this city has not taken the means to prepare itself fully 
for that greatness which its position and advantages mark out for it, 
but which it cannot attain except as the educated metropolis of an 
educated country—educated not merely in general learning and litera- 
ture, but in that science which is power because it wields the might 
of those forces which are the material expressions of the power of the 
Almighty Worker.” 
It was one of the chief joys of Sir William’s declining years that 
the “Canadian Lawrence or Sheffield” on whom he waited for the 
consummation of these his long cherished wishes was found in Sir 
William Macdonald, so that the present Faculty of Applied Science of 
McGill University with it numerous departments, its full staff of 
instructors and excellent equipment was fully organized before his 
death. | 

