PROCEFDINGS FOR 1899 LXXXV 



interest in literary and scientific matters have been employed with un- 

 flagging activity. It is a matter for satisfaction that the conrse of public 

 lectures always a prominent feature in the educational work of the 

 society has been of conspicuous interest and originality, and this is 

 the more gratifying inasmuch as the lecturers, with one exception, were 

 residents in the capital.' In recent years the list of lecturers each winter 

 has been largely made up of men distinguished in literature, science 

 and art, who have come from a distance on the invitation of the council 

 to favour the members and the public, with discourses upon topics in 

 fields of which they were special masters. These visitors have been, 

 in many cases, professors in the universities or leading men resident in 

 cities more or less distant, and the high character of the lecture course 

 has been maintained by this policy. It is not, however, too much 

 to say that when the council decided to invite local men to take 

 a larger part in the lecture course, they adopted a step which was 

 justified, and it is a matter of special satisfaction to the society 

 to have thus discovered that, in Ottawa itself, there is a body 

 of men who are carrying on original work in various branches 

 of knowledge, and are able to present their results in the form of literary 

 criticism of a high order, of technical research and exposition, marked 

 by great originality and of political and social inquiry, of no small value 

 from the scientific economist's point of view. The society thus affords 

 facilities for the presentation to the public of the important results 

 reached by such workers, and in the lecture course provides opportunity 

 for their exposition and for their thorough discussion, while in the 

 published transactions it enables the authors to embody them in per- 

 manent form. This reference to the printed publication issued by the 

 society demands a more detailed explanation. At last - has been 

 achieved what the society has long aimed at, viz., the issue of a printed 

 journal, or volume of transactions, in which the more original and im- 

 portant communications, read to the society during the winter course 

 of lectures, might be given the permanence of print. While the prime 

 object of the society in the past has been the popularization of litera- 

 ture, philosophy, art and the natural sciences, by means of high-class 

 lectures as well as by the library and reading room, it has been no 

 less its object to stimulate original work and encourage its members 

 to bring their results before the members of the society. It was vain 

 to expect that this worthy object could be fully achieved unless the 

 society were prepared to put these contributions into printed form. 



The Transactions (Part I) which have been issued are but a 

 beginning, but both in form and in the' quality of the articles contained 



