PROCEEDINGS FOR 1885. XI 



SESSION II. (Afternoon Sitting.) 

 Addresses by the President, Vice-President and Dr. Chauveau. 



The fellows and delegates again assembled in the Railway Committee Room at 2 o'clock. His 

 Excellency the Governor-General, the Marqnis of Lansdowne, took his seat as Honorary President, 

 and called upon the President to deliver the opening address. 



The following is an abstract of the adJ.-oss of the President, Dr. T. Sterrv Hunt :— 



The President, in opening the session, congratulated the Society on the work that it had accom- 

 plished during the past year, and referred to the two quarto volumes of its Transactions published in 

 1883 and 1S84, and already distributed among the pi-incix^al libraries and institutions of learning 

 throughout the world, as showing that Canada was adding somewhat to the progress both of literature 

 and of science. He spoke with feeling of the loss by death of two of the members of the Society 

 during the past year. One of these, Mr. Oscar Dunn, a young man of great promise in French litera- 

 ture, had distinguished himself, not only in Canada, but in the world of journalism in Paris. The 

 other, Mr. Alexander Murray, was for more than twenty years a member of the Geological Survey of 

 Canada under the late Sir William Logan, and had done much to make known the geology and phy- 

 sical geography of the great lakes and the valleys of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence, before he was 

 called to direct the geological .sui-^'ey of Newfoundland, where he rendei'ed important services to 

 science. 



The Royal Society of Canada has before it vast fields of labour, alike in history, in antiquity, and in 

 natural science. After alluding briefly to the territory of Canada as a battle-ground upon which, for 

 a century, two great European races were contending for the mastery of the continent in a prolonged 

 struggle, the study of which affords precious material alike for the man of letters and the philosophic 

 historian, he passed to a review of some of the problems which lie before the members of the two 

 Bcientitic Sections of the Society. Vast regions now belonging to the Dominion of Canada, stretching 

 from the lakes to the Arctic sea, and from ocean to ocean, are still to a great extent unexplored. 

 These present important questions in geography and geology, and in the study of their fauna and 

 flora. Closely connected with this subject is that of the correct determination of longitudes. Twenty- 

 five years ago much uncertainty existed as to the precise location on the map of the globe of our 

 Canadian cities. It was then that the Geological Survey undertook to fix the longitude of Quebec, 

 Montreal, and other places, by the electi-ical method, and with excellent results. Within the past few 

 years, however, methods admitting of greater accuracy have been devised, and, by the help of these, 

 the longitude of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as compared with that of Greenwich, has been carefully' 

 redetermined. It hence became of importance that the exact longitude of Canadian cities with refer- 

 ence to Cambridge should be fixed, and the results of a series of careful observations, under the 

 combined direction of Professor Rogers of the Cambridge Observatory and members of our Society, 

 will be laid before the physical Section of our Society and published in our Transactions. 



The geography of our sea-coasts presents problems of great importance. The Pacific shores of 

 the Dominion ai'e but little known, and our Atlantic waters are subject to strong tides and local 

 currents which are sometimes disastrous to navigators. Other nations have done much to investigate 

 and to systematize the knowledge of tides and marine currents, and Canada, in view of her important 

 commercial marine, should take part in such work. The Dominion Government has been solicited to 

 cooperate with a joint committee composed of members of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science together with members of our own Society, and there are good hopes that systematic 

 labours will soon be commenced both on our Pacific and our Atlantic shores. Not remotely connected 

 with the last subject is that of our fisheries. Much attention has already been given to those of the 

 inland waters, but the scientific cultivation of the marine fisheries and the care of those vast meadows 

 of the sea, so rich in food, has hitherto been neglected. The systematic woi'k of the United States 



