LX ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
XXVI.—From The Ottawa Field-Naturalists Club, through H. M. 
AMI, M.A., D.Sc., F.G.S., (President of the Club.) 
IntRopucToRY NOTES. 
The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club organized in March, 1879, has 
consequently just completed the 21st year of its existence and has had 
the honour of being affiliated to your honourable society ever since its 
inauguration in this city on the 25th day of May, 1882. For the first 
eleven years of our existence the club sought by means of excursions, sub- 
excursions or field days, to investigate the natural history resources of 
“The Ottawa District,’ which term meant to comprise an area with 
Ottawa as centre, which has a radius of about 20 miles. We made it our 
business as well as our pleasure to go out into the broad field of nature 
and search out what the district contained. 
A number of local lists of natural history objects giving the flora 
and fauna both recent and extinct has been published by the club and 
included in the fifteen volumes of “ Transactions ” already issued. 
The club’s work lay chiefly in the direction of researches in the 
seven following sections: Geology, Botany, Entomology, Ornithology, Con- 
chology, General Zoology and Archeology. These sections are presided 
over by leaders carefully selected from the membership of the club by 
the council, immediately after the annual meeting which takes place ac- 
cording to a clause of the Constitution on the third Tuesday of March 
each year, in order to be in readiness before the spring season opens. 
The leaders then and there appointed conduct the excursions and sub- 
excursions of the club, arrangements for which are made by a Committee 
of Council, on which occasion material collected is examined, noted and 
taken home for further study. The result of observations thus made are 
then submitted to the winter meetings or soirées of the club, a pro- © 
gramme of which is prepared by the Soirée Committee of Council. 
Papers bearing upon the work done in each of the branches or sec- 
tions of the club are read or presented for publication. They subse- 
quently appear in “ The Ottawa Naturalist,’ the official organ of our 
club. 
The club’s membership, at first restricted to persons residing in the 
Ottawa district, now includes a large proportion of the working natura- 
lists in various provinces of the Dominion, and on this account'has had 
to extend its sphere of activity co-ordinately with the requirements of 
its ever-growing membership. Accordingly, in 1890, by a unanimous 
vote on a resolution passed at the annual meeting of the club, it was de- 

