VIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
all that could be desired, giving the delegates many opportunities of 
becoming acquainted with each other outside the official meetings, and 
the historical papers presented were of a most interesting and valuable 
character. 
s 
11.—DeEcEsseD MEMBERS. 
Since the last annual meeting, the Royal Society of Canada has 
sustained a great loss in the death of Dr. William Henry Drummond, 
a highly esteemed member of Section II. 
Dr. Wilfred Campbell, the Secretary of that Section, and a close 
friend of the late Dr. Drummond’s, at request, has contributed the fol- 
lowing notice :— 
“The loss by death of Dr. William Henry Drummond is a serious 
blow to Section II, of which for several years he was an active Fellow. 
As is well known, Dr. Drummond was always desirous for the welfare 
of the Royal Society, a fact which was clearly stated in a letter received 
by the Secretary of his Section only two days before he died. Dr. 
Drummond was born in the county of Leitrim, Ireland, of Scottish 
ancestry, who had settled there a couple of centuries ago. He had a 
good deal of Irish blood in his veins, and the very last poem he read 
in public, was one on Ireland at the St. Patrick’s banquet at Montreal. 
He was a splendid example of the mixture of the Scottish and Irish 
Celt, having all of the wit and pathos of the one, together with the 
undercurrent of the Highland imagination. These factors affected to 
a large degree his character as a man and his genius as a writer. 
“Known on two continents as the ‘ Habitant Poet, he was not 
only an author but a physician of note and a strenuous lover of outdoor 
life. As a man of singularly kindly and generous personality, he made 
many friends on both continents, all of whom will regret deeply his 
early and sudden death. 
“As a writer, he was one of the most original and famous Canada 
has ever produced. No other Canadian Jittératewr was so widely appre- 
ciated in America and Britain, and only one other American, James 
Whitcomb Riley, has appealed in the same manner to the heart of our 
humanity. There is a higher art in his work than the mere formalist 
of over-wrought English and literary polish. Like Burns, in a lesser 
degree, he created a series of characters who represent at its best the 
people he depicts. Though all of his work is not poetry of the finest 
class, some of it reaches a very high standard. The poem, ‘ Leetle Lac 
Grenier,’ has a beauty and a high poetical quality not reached by many 
writers to-day, and is worthy of the school of Wordsworth. Dr. Drum- 
mond’s genius has enriched our literature with a combination of char- 
