LIT. ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 
The President's Address. 
Dr. J. W. Dawson, the President of the Society, then said : 
My Lorp, Your Roya HiGnNess, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: 
In opening this the second session of the Royal Society of Canada, Your Excellency 
has referred to some of the more important points in its history in the past year, and to its prospects 
for the future ; and in the present address I may very properly survey much of the same ground from 
the special point of view of the members of the Society. 
We have occasion to congratulate ourselves on the reception which our inaugural meeting met 
with at the hands of the public and of the newspaper press. Everywhere the institution of the Society 
was recognized as wise and beneficial, and, if any doubts were expressed with reference to it, they were 
based, not on hostility to the Society, but on a very natural diffidence as to the capacity of 
Canada, in its present state of development, to sustain a body comparable with the great national 
societies of other countries. The amount of original work produced at our first meeting was evi- 
dently an agreeable surprise to many; and, while there was some friendly criticism by which we 
may hope to profit, on the whole, our début was regarded with that feeling at once kindly, con- 
siderate and patriotic, which becomes all true Canadians in witnessing any effort, however feeble, 
to sustain and exalt the greatness of our country. 
It is, no doubt, a matter of regret that the Transactions of our first meeting could not be 
immediately published. In the absence of any pecuniary means for this purpose, the President 
and Vice-President ventured to issue on their own responsibility a pamphlet of twenty-two 
quarto pages, containing the inaugural addresses and:a summary of proceedings; but of fifty-one 
papers laid before the meeting, and many of which are of great merit, none have yet appeared in 
print, except a few which their authors have found means to publish independently of the Society. 
This has undoubtedly placed us in a disadvantageous position, and has been unjust to some of our 
members, who have suffered in reputation from their work remaining unpublished for a year. 
Happily we shall now be able to remedy this. 
The first event in our history is the gracious permission, to which your Excellency has referred, 
to assume the title of the Royal Society of Canada. We shall not forget the responsibility laid upon 
us by this name to make the work of the Society worthy of the patronage of our beloved Queen, 
worthy of the encouragement 4hich you have given as her representative, and deserving of the 
respect and approval of those great societies of the Mother Country and of the continent of Europe, 
with which we must be prepared to enter into friendly rivalry and competition. 
Next to this, we should place the recognition of the Society by the Government and Parliament 
of the Dominion. A formal and legal existence has been bestowed upon us by an act of incorpora- 
tion, and the more substantial gift of a money grant will now enable us to publish our Transactions 
with adequate illustrations. While returning our thanks for the favors thus accorded, we should not 
forget the appreciative and complimentary manner in which our position and work were spoken of 
by the honorable gentlemen who acted on our behalf, and by other members of Parliament. That 
we have been thus received, when our claims were rather those of promise than of performance, 
indicates on the part of our public men an earnest desire to foster any effort for the growth of litera- 
ture and science, and their confidence in the future of the Society—a confidence which it must be our 
business to justify. 
In connection with this, the Society accepts the suggestions kindly made by your Excellency in 
regard to the expenditure of money granted for publication. We feel that we shall be judged by our 
first volume of Transactions, and that this should contain only original matter of real merit and value, 
not previously published elsewhere, and not of such a character as to secure ready publication in 
ordinary journals. Less important productions should appear only in short abstracts; and translation, 
if done at all, and illustration too expensive for the means of the Society, must be done at the 
