PRESIDENTIAL ADDEESS. Ig 



nology, agriculture and food chemistry. They will also serve to give some idea of what 

 remains to be accomplished in the saving of material of mineral, vegetable and animal 

 origin. 



I have only directed your attention to the saving of material, and have made no 

 reference to the v^aste of human energy vphich may be going on around us. Neither 

 have I hinted at the higher forces at work in our mental and spiritual natures, in the 

 operations of which imponderable substances of the highest degree of usefulness may be 

 undergoing waste. I have confined my observations to those parts of creation regardin"- 

 which we are more readily able to observe and reason. I have referred to the lifeless 

 mineral creation having its origin far back behind Azoic ages ; to the living vegetable 

 creation which started in Siluric time ; to the animal creation moving and breathino-, 

 since the atmosphere admitted of this in the Carboniferous period ; but the mental crea- 

 tion, beginning with the age of man and in which he has his being, as well as the spiri- 

 tual creation of even later origin are outside of our subject, and, in many respects, beyond 

 the range of our intellectual grasp. None the less real are they, however, and, it may be 

 far more deserving of study than the matters to which I have called your attention. To 

 others who have devoted their lives to the study of the mental, moral and spiritual 

 worlds, there may be known instances of waste far more vital than those of a material 

 character and the prevention of which on this earth might go far towards creating in it 

 some resemblance to that higher celestial state, in whose existence most of the human 

 race believe, and for the attainment of which we ought to be content to strive. 



