PROGEEDINGS 
OF THE 
Aova Scotian Institute of Science. 
SESSION OF 1900-1901. 
AwnnuaL Business MEsTING. 
Legislative Council Chamber, Halifax, 19th November, 1900. 
THe Presipent, Dr. A. H. MacKay, in the chair. 
THe PresipEent addressed the Institute as follows :— 
GentTLeEMEN,—It has been customary at our Annual Meetings for the 
retiring President to make a summary review of the year’s work—a sort 
of annual inventory. In following this custom, were I speaking to the 
general public, I would be required to give some kind of demonstration 
of the object and value of such work as we are doing in line with similar 
organizations in every civilized country. For those who see a fine 
mushroom grow in one night are generally unaware of the one hundred 
nights and the one hundred days during which its invisible white, 
silken, threadlike mycelial cells were tunnelling the surrounding earth 
in myriad lines with ceaseless activity, so that when the appropriate 
time should come tens of thousands of microscopic tubular lines of 
transport should simultaneously carry from every quarter the duly 
assimilated matter to build up and complete in a few hours the visible 
and generally appreciated fruit. very great discovery or invention of 
modern times popularly considered great, is in like manner simply the 
fruit of the unostentatious, patient and continuous labor of a multitude 
of seekers after knowledge of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, in one or more regions of the infinite domain in which we 
exist. Without these humble and severely accurate observations of fact 
and measurements of force going on from year to year there can be no 
Pro~, & TRANS, N. S. Inst. Sci., Vou. X. Proc.—F.. 
(iii) 
