186 OPENING ADDRESS—-MACGREGOR. 
actions, has varied with the years. These you see before you; 
and they shew that our Institute has had its ups and downs. 
Judging by numbers of papers, you see that the time of our 
grea‘est activity was the first few years of our existence, that 
since 1867 we have kept oscillating about an average of about 
11 papers a year, never getting far above that number and never 
falling far below it, that the year of greatest intellectual dearth 
was 1875, and that, during the last few years we have been 
below the average. If we remember that in the first few years 
we published regularly papers on our local meteorology, and that 
now all such returns are made to the Meteorological Bureau and 
published by the Legislature, it would appear that for the last 
20 years we have kept at a pretty uniform level, and that at 
present we are but little below it. The other curve, the curve 
of pages, has an interest of its own. It shews much greater 
variations than the curve of papers, the Transactions having 
been much bulkier in some years thanin others. In 1866, 1869, 
1873, 1876, and 1878, our members scattered the silver of speech 
with lavish hand, but since 1878 we seem to have realized that 
though speech may be silver silence is gold; and it is a somewhat 
remarkable fact that, though since 1868 the number of papers 
has not in any year varied very much from the average, the 
average length of papers between 1868 and 1879 was nearly twice 
as great as between 1879 and the present time. Of course the 
falling off is byno means an indication of lethargy. it is possi- 
bly due to a growing power of perceiving rubbish, and a conse- 
quent growing determination to eliminate it. 
On the whole the record which these curves show is not satis- 
factory. The activity of the Society ought to have been gradu- 
ally increasing ; instead of that, it has been gradually diminishing, 
‘until now we find ourselves not only making no progress, but 
even falling somewhat below the records of former years. And 
this just means as I said at the outset, that the older workers in 
our Institute are passing away, and that few young men are com- 
ing forward to take their places. 
If we ask why this is, it must be noted that in the early history 
of a country, it is a comparatively easy matter to make additions 
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