PKOCEEDINGS FOE 1885. XV 



existent depuis longtemps dans les deux grands pays d'où los jiopulations canadiennes tirent leur 

 origine. 



C'est le V(eu de tous, et c'est chez moi une conviction profonde et qui n'est égaide que par la 

 reconnaissance que je vous dois pour l'honneur que vous venez do me faire. 



Speech hv the Governor-General. 



A vote of thanks to His Excellency for his attendance at the meeting was then moved by the 

 President, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, seconded by the Vice-President, Dr. Wilson, ai\d carried unanimously 

 amidst applause. 



In reply, His Excellency spoke as follows : — 



I thank you for the vote of thanks which you have been good enough to pass. If I have earned 

 it, I have, I think, done so by maintaining a decoious silence during the progress of the proceedings — 

 a silence which I should pi'obably be wise in continuing, if I wished to keep you iinder the same sense 

 of obligation towards me. I should, however, be sorry not to have an opportunity of saying, how glad 

 I am to tind that the Royal Society is prosperous and full of enei-gy, and of assuring you that person- 

 ally it is a source of satisfaction to me to be associated, even in an honorary capacity, with so distin- 

 guished a body. If I overstep these limits and attempt to say more, I shall tind myself upon ground 

 on to which 1 prefer not to venture. I confessed to you last j^ear that I had no claims to a place, 

 however lowly, in the ranks of either the representatives of literature or of science. The utmost for 

 which I could hope would be that, from contact with you, I might obtain a superficial coating either of 

 the one or the other. We all know that in Mature there is a tendency in plants and in animals, and 

 even, if a distinguished member of the Society is to be believed, in inorganic sub.stances, to mimic the 

 forms by which they are surrounded, and to assume shapes and colours closely resembling those of their 

 environment. In this way I can just now conceive that, after a time, I might be able to develop a 

 spurious and superficial appeai-ance of literary and scientific culture. You would, however, I am 

 afraid, soon tind me out ; and you would not be long in discovering that, if I may use a geological 

 simile which will perhaps pass current in the Ottawa district, what I had to present to you was pyr- 

 oxene and not good, honest phosphate. 



On the other hand, sir, 1 am only too ready to admit that we, whose lot is cast in political life, 

 should be gi'eatly the gainers if we were more directly under the influence of letters and of science. 

 I am afraid it is too often the case that our literary tendency, if we have one, is not exhibited in any 

 form more highly developed than that of a pungent epigram or a personal diatribe, and that our 

 scientific investigations do not as a i-ule extend beyond researches into the prehistoric strata of " Han- 

 sard." How much better it would be for us and for our clients if our facts were more carefully verifieil 

 and collected, more methodically arranged, and our inductions formed with moi'e strict reference to 

 the facts ? Are we not all of us too fond of the most unscientific, or, in other words, of the most illo- 

 gical forms of reasoning? Unhappily, too many of us belong to the great band of followers and 

 partizans, who generally do not get very far bej'ond the kind of reasoning which consists in the asser- 

 tion, that such and such statement must be true because such and such a person has made it, or per- 

 haps, conversely, that such and such a person has made the statement, and that therefore it cannot be 

 ti'ue? Again, do we not — those of iis who would wish to be classed among the leaders and not the 

 followers, and who think that we are fit to be entrusted with the direction of public affairs and the 

 guidance of public opinion — often content ourselves merely with ascertaining that opinion, and 

 assuming that when once it has been ascertained it must be right. We are, I am afi-aid, content with 

 such methods as these and apt to banish political science first to our remotest book-shelves and then 

 to the most distant planets. 



And if we owe a debt to science, and if we ought to owe it a still greater one, we are surely 

 no less in the debt of literatni'c and no less blâmable if we neglect her. In the age through 



