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ABSTRACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



The President, previous to vacating tlie cliaii*, delivered an 

 Address on the value of Natural History Societies educatioually 

 considered. He observed that science had now definitely asserted 

 its claim to be recognized as an integral branch of a liberal 

 education ; this was not an unmixed good, for quite indej^endently 

 of the natural clinging to time-honoured and well-tried systems of 

 mental training, there was a real danger of losing in depth what 

 was gained in comj^rehensiveness, and, considering the wide field of 

 the natural sciences, this was a real danger. Still, in the face of 

 the wonderful progress of discovery in the domains of nature and 

 in its application to man's life and comfort, and of the manifest 

 cuiTcnt of thought which was setting in that channel, it would be 

 simply impossible, whatever might be done with the present, that 

 the rising generation of whatever class should not receive sufiicient 

 elementary instruction in the principles of science to enable them 

 to pursue in one or other of its branches as they grew up. Much 

 caution, however, would have to be used in the method of science- 

 teaching. It might take two forms : one, the more attractive one, 

 of trying to impart some knowledge of all the leading sciences ; the 

 othei-, the sounder one, of selecting a very limited number, and 

 those the severer ones, and endeavouring to teach the principles of 

 these thoroughly, leaving their after development to individual self- 

 culture. Now if all this were granted, it followed that aU who 

 professed to interest themselves in education, whether of the higher 

 or lower classes, must, from the nature of the case, interest them- 

 selves in whatever tended to advance or teach science ; and hence he 

 took occasion to express surprise and regret that so many of the 

 upper, the professional, and the middle class in Canterbury should 

 hold aloof from a Society which, whatever its j^ast shortcomings, 

 was struggling into a groove of good and useful work. He con- 

 cluded by raising the question whether the Society might not do 

 something in Canterbury to solve the question how is science- 

 teaching to be brought within the reach of the young persons of 

 the upper and middle class in Canterbury. 



