LXXII. THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
In the United States so numerous are the institutions devoted 
entirely to research, so large are the endowments, and so great is the 
interest in research in the hospitals and in the laboratories connected 
with the great universities that it is not unlikely the world’s centre 
of gravity of scientific discovery may soon be found in the great 
Republic. 
I have}sought in what precedes to form an estimate of the intel- 
lectual assets of the Dominion. I have done this, not by a process 
of literary and scientific criticism and valuation, but by a process 
of analysis and classification. In these assets I have marked out 
two great classes. To the first class belong those intellectual forces 
that affect the education and mental level of the people; to the 
second belong literary and artistic creation, and scientific discovery 
and invention. I have been anxious properly to place this second 
class; to it belongs literary, historical, and scientific research, and 
within it, in the main, are included the activities of this Royal Society. 
I have made this analysis and classification as a possible basis, roughly 
and imperfectly sketched out I confess, of the work of a Bureau 
which I hope may at no distant day be established in Ottawa. We 
collect and tabulate at considerable expense statistics respecting 
crops, production of mines, forests and fisheries, population, births, 
marriages, and deaths, immigration, etc. Why should we not in like 
inanner in a systematic way and for the whole Dominion, from infor- 
mation supplied by the various provinces, seek to arrive at the non- 
material assets of Canada, the educational statistics of the provinces, 
their libraries, museums, and picture galleries, their technical and agri- 
cultural schools and colleges, the books that have been published, 
the researches of whatever kind that have been undertaken and brought 
to a successful conclusion, the new auxiliary institutions and societies 
that have come into being and the old ones that have gone out of 
existence in connection with our universities, the historical, literary, 
and scientific societies and what they are doing, with whatever else 
concerns our intellectual advancement. We should have all this 
published annually in a form convenient of access; we should then 
know where to go for details. 
It is not necessary before such a body as the Royal Society 
that I should close this address, which already too long has occupied 
your attention, with the usual trite phrases and accustomed thoughts 
as to the importance of our physical prosperity and _ intellectual 
growth advancing pari passu. 
