Secrion IL, 1907. [3] Trans. R. S. C. 
Î.—Inaugural Introduction to Section II, Royal Society of Canada, 
1907. 
By Rev. Dr. N. Brrwasu. 
(Read May 14, 1907.) 
Gentlemen,— I must first of all thank you for the honour you have 
done me in electing me president of this important section of the Royal 
Society. As a younger member of the Society I could not pretend to 
any claim for such consideration, and when your kind remembrance 
came to me during my absence from the last annual meeting, it was 
‘indeed a surprise which could not but be highly appreciated. 
The recurrence of our annual meeting seldom fails to call our 
attention to two things which mark the passing of the years. One is 
that there are faces whom we miss and shall not see again. The other 
is that new men of promise are entering the field of Canadian literature 
from whom our country may expect good things in the days to come. 
Two very distinguished names have this year passed from our lists, 
the one an honoured charter member, who for some years has been 
retired from active work, but whose pen even in ripe old age still con- 
veyed a welcome greeting to his fellow-countrymen. Mr. Wm. Kirby 
was not a Canadian by birth, but sprang from that northern race which 
has made the eastern counties of England so famous in history. Com- 
ing to Canada when a lad of fifteen, he entered into our life with all 
the zest of youthful enthusiasm and a poetic temperament. At that 
date the field for the literary artist lay in two directions, the old time 
French life in which the age of chivalry was projected almost into the 
nineteenth century and the U. HE. Loyalist movement in which the 
finest qualities of the highbred Englishman were put to the test of 
heroic suffering. The spirit of those themes took possession of Mr. 
Kirby’s soul and made him truly a Canadian in thought and sympathy. 
He, first of all our men of letters, won the attention of the outside 
world to Canadian themes and directed the feet of sentimental pilgrims 
to the holy places of our history. 4 
Dr. Drummond, in a sense, completed the work which Kirby 
began, for both dealt with the French life which had survived from a 
bygone age. Mr. Kirby, like the majority of the older writers, found 
his characters and incidents among the highborn. Dr. Drummond, 
entering into the modern spirit, discovered the beautiful, the picturesque 
and even the heroic among the lowly children of toil. He, too, gained 
