XVIII EOYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 



These remarks naturally suggest a fact of another kind, viz., that a large amount of the executive 

 liusiiiess durini:; the J'car, when the Society is not in session, and when it is inconvenient for distant 

 inemlicrs of Council to attend, has necessarily to ho perlbrniod by a small number of those who reside 

 within convenient distances of Ottawa or Montreal; responsibilities and labor thus devolve upon the 

 few that should otherwise be spread over the many. This is especially the case in regard to the pub- 

 lication of our Proceedings and Ti'ansactions, which necessarily involves a serious amount of irksome 

 labor. If we, the distant members, cannot lighten it in any way, it may be permissible to say that, 

 wiiile not insensible of the unavoidable disadvantages which limit our participation in the Society's 

 operations in many ways, we yet have but one feeling in regard to the laborious and thoroughly 

 efficient and satisfactory manner in which, through many difficulties, the work of publication has 

 been carried on. We are grateful for this to our active members in Montreal and Ottawa, whose 

 painstaking efforts to make the researches of others presentable to the public are apt to be over- 

 looked, and especially to our active Secretary, who is styled hmwrary, on the sound principle, I pre- 

 sume, that the greater the labor the greater the honour. We have also the comforting assui-ance, 

 expressed in many tangible ways, and not as a mere sentiment, that by seeking to maintain the 

 activity of the distant provinces, the Society has the surest guarantee against the tendency to 

 centralization which seemed io some of us from the first to menace it, and the best prospect of success 

 in carrying out its aim of permanent usefulness to the whole Dominion. 



We first assembled as a Society in the Eailway Committee room in the Parliament buildings, on 

 May 25th, 1882, and have come together annually since then, so that we have now entered upon 

 our seventh year's work. The record of the preceding six years is contained in our five volumes of 

 Proceedings and Transactions, a perusal of which enables us to ascertain to what extent the objects 

 set before us are being accomplished. 



Prom the nature of our organization, which necessitates our being divided off into distinct Sec- 

 tions, which assemble in separate rooms, we are apt individual!}' to be but imperfectly cognizant of 

 the full extent of work that is being actually accomplished by the Society as a whole. If it be so 

 among ourselves, how much more is a paucitj' or total absence of knowledge of what wo are doing 

 likely to prevail among those who are merely onlookers. When we ai'c hci'e assembled together, the 

 members of all Sections, and favored by the presence of friends who manifest an interest in our pro- 

 ceedings, I do not know that the hour can be spent more profitably than by adverting to some of the 

 work of the members during the past yeai", now comjiloted by the publication of the fifth volume of 

 Transactions. 



Before proceeding to do so, there are some matters relating to our organization, and to the opera- 

 tions of the Society as a whole, that claim attention. A few changes have taken place in our mem- 

 beiship during the year: one, in the second Section, by the resignation of Mr. Charles Sangstei-, 

 and another by the retirement of Mr. Charles Lindsay. In the third Section we lost, by the 

 death of Dr. Herbert A. Bayne, at a comparatively early age, a member who gave much jnomise 

 of usefulness. There were likewise two retirements in the fourth Section, Messrs. J. M. Jones and 

 D. N. St. Cyr. One of the vacancies in the second Section was filled, in accordance with the recom- 

 mendation of the section, b}' election to fellowship of John Charles Dent, author of " The Last Forty 

 Years: Canada since the Union of 1841," and other litei'ar}' works. The other vacancy still remains. 

 The number of the third Section has been completed by the election of Mr. Henry T. Bovej^, the active 

 Secretary of the Canadian Institute of Civil Engineers, and a contributor to our Transactions. For 

 the two vacancies in the fourth Section, candidates have been nominated, and the Society will be called 

 to elect before our adjournment. Professor Alphonse Le Eoy, of the University of Liege, and 

 member of the Eoyal Academy of Belgium, has been added to our still short list of corresponding 

 members. 



As our organization is of a limited membership, composed of twenty fellows in each of the four 

 Sections, giving a total of eighty, it is essential that all should be active workers. The Council have 



