158 A PAPER—BY WM. GOSSIP. 
modestly observed :—“ Should our hopes not be disappointed, we 
look forward to the time when our ‘Transactions’ shall be 
exchanged with older and more important institutions, and any 
new or well authenticated fact having passed the ordeal of our 
own local organization, shall be submitted to the great centre of 
science, and become the property of the whole world.” 
But it was not so much the early accomplishment of the re- 
sult thus anticipated, as a conviction of the Institute, that it 
was within the scope of the talent and ability of its members to 
command attention both at home and abroad, and to enter upon 
a high career of usefulness whenever they choose to bestir them- 
selves. They lost no time in doing so. The inaugural being 
disposed of, the first scientific paper, appropriately devoted to, 
practical zoology, was read by Dr. Bernard Gilpin, a naturalist, 
well known in British America and the United States as the 
Nova Scotia Zoologist. He furnishes an exhaustive description 
of the herring of our coasts, clupea elongata, and its peculiarities 
and species, which leaves nothing to be desired. In further 
numbers he enlarges upon the Zoology of Nova Scotia, and to all 
who are curious or desirous to be instructed in such matters, he 
has so identified himself with the natural history of every fish, 
bird, reptile and mammal of the country, and so accurately 
deseribed and illustrated them, that future writers or readers 
will require no other guide on these branches of the subject. 
This first paper was read Feb. 2, 1863. 
Other papers followed in rapid succession, to wit:—By Capt. 
(now General) Hardy, “On Nocturnal Life of Animals in the 
Forest ;’ further on, “On the Caplin, Mallotus Villosus,” of 
which he gives a most interesting and animated description. 
By this paper the fact not hitherto settled was established, that 
the southern limit of this ancient fish, an inhabitant of the deep 
in the days of the tertiary period, and found fossil near Montreal, 
is the coast of Nova Scotia, which it frequently visits. By 
Thos. Belt, who was afterwards distinguished as “the naturalist 
of Nicaragua,’ “On Some recent Movements of the Karth’s 
Surface.” By Henry Poole, Superintendent of the Albion Mines 
