Xir ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA, 



the same countenance and favour may be extended to us by Your Excellency, and that you will be 

 graciously pleased to accept the oflSce of Honorary President of the Eoyal Society of Canada. 



P. J. O. Chauveatj, President. 



John Geo. Bourinot, Secretary. 



The Governor-General's Reply. 



His Excellency replied as follows : — 



Mr. President, Di-. Sterry Hunt, Ladies and Gentlemen :— My presence in this room is, I hope, 

 sufficient evidence that I do not intend to offer an obstinate resistance to the invitation contained in 

 the Address, with which you have been good enough to present me. In thanking you for it, I am afraid. 

 I can do little more than acknowledge the compliment which you have paid me in asking me to 

 assume an office which, though honorary, certainly confei-s some reflected distinction upon the holder 

 I have always felt, that one of the privileges which renders the Governor-General's office most attrac- 

 tive, is to be found in the ojjportunities which he enjoys of becoming acquainted with those persons in 

 every sphere and profession of life within the Dominion, whose acquaintance is best worth making. If 

 that proposition is true generally, it is one from which I am certainly not disposed to recede when I find 

 the members of the Royal Society ready, not only to welcome the Governor-General to the country, 

 but also to give him an official status in connection with the distinguished body to which they belong. 



But, gentlemen, I do not forget that I owe the honour which you propose to confer upon nie to 

 something besides a desire on yom- part to extend agreeably the circle of the Governor-General's 

 acquaintance. His presence at your meetings is not without its significance. When you applied for 

 and obtained permission to assume the title of "Royal," when you determined that the Queen's repre- 

 sentative should be your Honorary President, j-ou were giving expression to a feeling that the work 

 in which you were engaged was one which deserved recognition, not only as of national moment to the 

 Dominion, but as one having an interest for the great Empire of which the Dominion forms a part. If, 

 sir, it is to be our conception of that Empire that, while the mother country shall exert a moral influence 

 which may act upon her different colonies, each of these as it advances in culture and development 

 and in intellectual power, shall, in its turn, exert an influence which shall re-act upon her, sui-ely it is 

 not a very far-fetched statement to say that the mother country has an interest in what you are doing to 

 promote learning and literature in this great Canadian community. And, after all, of the many points 

 of contact between the Old World and the New, none is closer than that at which the Literature and 

 the Science of the two merge imperceptibly into each other. This is true in regard to the past, and 

 not less true in regard to the present. 



If we look back at the history of Canada, we see that the events which led to the colonization 

 of New England and New France form a part of the history of Old England and Old France 

 The movements, partly religious and partly political, which led to the earliest settlement on the banks 

 of the St. Lawrence and on the Atlantic seaboard of America ; the fierce struggles of race which 

 for generations brought suffering and bloodshed to these shores, are unintelligible unless we read 

 them by the light of contemporaneous events in Europe. In the domain of Science, the scientific 

 men of the New World are working upon the lines laid down by their predecessors in the Old World, 

 and are accumulating knowledge which will be approin'iated and utilized by their successors in 

 both hemispheres. In Literature the dividing line is almost imperceptible. The great classics of 

 the Old World are ours by right of inheritance, and we iuue no deai-er wish on belialf of our 

 Canadian writers than that they should be known and appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic. 

 I feel thei-efore, as if the presence here of one who is, as it were, an official link between the Old and 

 the New World was the outward sign of the intimate union which must always subsist between the 

 Science and Literature of the Old World and the Science and Literature of the New. 



Having to this extent justified, if it be a justification, my acceptance of the Honorary Presidency 

 of the Society, I am bound to confess that I have little hope of being able to take a part in its proceed- 



