OPENING ADDRESS. 
By Proressor J. G. MACGREGOR, PRESIDENT. 
MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE OF NATURAL SCIENCE: 
I TAKE this, the earliest opportunity which has presented itself, 
of thanking you for the honour you have shown me, in electing 
me to the Presidency of the Institute. To be asked to preside 
over the work of a number of earnest men, however few, must 
always be a source of gratification. The invitation to preside over 
your work at the present time is especially so, because of the 
critical point which the activity of the Institute seems to have 
reached. We have recently had the misfortune to lose some of 
our most active members, and so far as we can see there are few 
young men who are ready to take their places. For this reason 
the Presidency of the Institute at present should involve much 
more onerous duties than ever before, and I undertake to dis- 
charge them, only because I know that, though there are few 
active scientific workers left among us, those few are willing and 
ready to exert themselves to the utmost. 
I have looked recently somewhat fully into our history, and 
find that, since its first meeting in 1863, this Institute has pub- 
lished about 304 papers, dealing for the most part with the 
Natural History and Geology of the Province of Nova Scotia, 
and averaging about 9 pages each. It is interesting to know 
how these papers have been distributed in time, and I have 
therefore plotted two curves, shewing, one, how the number of 
papers, and the other, how the number of pages, in our Trans- 
