4. CHARLES CARPMAEL: 
thus add to the interest of these meetings and to the value of our Transactions. We should 
also gain this future advantage, that should a vacancy arise in our Section we should be 
able to judge by the value of the papers, which had been contributed to us, whom it was 
desirable to elect to fill the vacancy. 
With regard to the next function of the Society, namely, that of advising the Govern- 
ment on scientific points, we have had, as the President has already informed you, for the 
last two years, a committee to coéperate with a committee of the British Association, in 
urging on the Government the advisability of providing for continuous tidal observations 
in Canada. In January last, these committees, with some members of the Board of Trade 
of Montreal, waited on the Government, and urged that provision be made in the estimates 
for this purpose. The defecit this year has, however, made it difficult to get any matter 
taken up that requires expenditure, and although all the members of the Government 
seem to acknowledge the necessity of accurate observations, the cost of obtaining them 
prevents them for the present from taking the matter up. 
Having made these few remarks and suggestions on the work of the Society, I should 
like to take this opportunity, the best that will perhaps ever occur to me, to point out to 
you how you could aid the particular branch of scientific work with which I am more 
particularly connected as Superintendent of the Meteorological Service of the Dominion 
of Canada. You are probably all of you aware that the Dominion Government has for 
many years past made annually an appropriation for the maintenance of this service. In 
doing this, they have principally in view the providing for storm warnings for the use of 
mariners, and for daily weather predictions for the benefit of farmers and others to whom 
a fairly accurate knowledge for a short time in advance of what weather may be expected 
is of commercial value ; and although the obtaining statistics of climate has not been 
entirely neglected, the vast bulk of the annual grant is absorbed for the two purposes 
which I have named. 
The observations which can be immediately made use of for these two purposes are 
not sufficient for the purpose of tracing out local peculiarities in climate, or for tracing 
these peculiarities to their causes in the local surroundings. To do this we must have 
the statistics which are collected by the Dominion Government supplemented by others 
which are not being collected by them, and the greater portion of which they cannot be 
expected to go to any considerable expense in obtaining. In Europe and also in the United 
States there are meteorological societies which collect much valuable information. These 
societies collect and print statistics, and also publish many papers on Meteorology, and 
are supported solely by the subscriptions of the members. In the United States, in addition 
to the work now performed by the Signal Service, which includes that which was for- 
merly undertaken by the Smithsonian Institute, many of the individual States have 
weather bureaus of their own. 
In Canada we have not many men of means and leisure who are sufficiently inter- 
ested in scientific researches to make them willing not only to devote their time to the 
systematic taking of observations, but to purchase instruments and pay for the printing 
of results. To meet in some measure this difficulty, the Meteorological Service, in the case 
of individuals who reside in districts from which sufficient observations are not already 
received, and who are willing to take observations gratis, furnishes the necessary instru- 
ments and provides for the publication of the observations. Notwithstanding this, there 
