Inaugural Address. 5 



book, and formed the nucleus of a museum, and received various 

 presents of a really valuable kind for promoting the purposes 

 which we have in view ? 



Again, if we cast our eyes back more particularly on the annals 

 of the past year, we shall see much to encourage us for the future. 

 Let me name one or two such points which the future historian of 

 this Society, if such a person should ever handle the pen, might seize 

 upon. First and foremost this year has witnessed the establish- 

 ment of natural science as a regular branch of our school educa- 

 tion. I need scarcely remind you under what happy auspices this 

 establishment has been effected. That such subjects should be 

 introduced into our curriculum is a distinct and conspicuous gain 

 to the present generation of learners. If I may express on this 

 subject the feelings of an earlier generation who were school boys 

 when such subjects were not taught, I would say thus much — It 

 has been my privilege to find shelter in my schoolroom for the 

 boxes and baggage of the newly arrived Muse, and as I sit in my 

 chair and contemplate the interesting array of apparatus which 

 occupies one portion of the room, and think how absorbing, how 

 far-reaching, how grand are the subjects which the use of that 

 apparatus illustrates, how much I might have known about them 

 had I only had my youthful teeth whetted early with a little taste 

 of scientific blood, and how little I can know now, I heave a sigh, 

 and falling back on classic ground, declare that, if verses were still 

 in fashion, I would set my form a very stiff set of elegiacs on the 

 modern Tantalus. 



Another point, perhaps, on which our historian would fasten 

 would be the growth of the Society in numbers, and the more 

 important growth of an intelligent interest on scientific subjects. 

 He would instance, perhaps, the interest which attended the ex- 

 planation and discussion of the phenomenon of the meteoric 

 shower of last November, or of the marvellous revelations of the 

 spectrum, in which the many coloured Iris seems once more as of 

 old to descend from the sky, and to disclose to the gaze of the 

 astonished investigator the secrets of other worlds. And finally, 

 it may be, our historian, in search of materials, would visit the 

 cases of our museum — that museum, which is at present founded 

 only on the golden future, but which will then be a building of the 

 past — and will find labelled with the year 1867 a collection of the 

 molluscs of the neighbourhood, which will bear solid evidence 

 of industry and research ; and from the ample exhibition of 

 individual specimens in which he will perchance venture on the 

 conclusion that the youth of this generation had no weak or 

 lingering sympathy with snails and slugs. 



So much for our annals, and now for our hopes for the future. 



