188 OPENING ADDRESS—MACGREGOR. 
such as our Institute was founded to foster. When our Colleges, 
either by acquiring large endowments or by combining their small 
endowments, become able to allow their scientific Professors to 
devote themselves to special departments of Science, we may 
expect the golden age of the Institute of Natural Science to begin. 
Meantime we must look elsewhere for the most of our recruits. 
There is one source from whch we may hope that before long 
a considerable number of recruits may be drawn, and that is 
from the teachers of the schools and academies of the Province. 
From our point of view it is most hopeful that the necessity of 
introducing Science-teaching into the schools is being more and 
more clearly perceived by our teachers, and that they are making 
creat efforts to acquire the knowledge that is necessary for its 
introduction. The Summer School of Science, which leading 
men among them have established, will not only assist them in 
preparation for their educational duties, but must in some cases 
produce an interest in scientific work which will lead to still 
greater results. The many will of course fit themselves merely 
to teach, but the few will fit themselves to investigate. And the 
public-spirited men who devote their vacations to assisting their 
colleagues to prepare for the more thorough discharge of their 
academic duties, may have the satisfaction before long of finding 
that some of the seed they have sown is springing up and bear- 
ing fruit worthy of being preserved in the Transactions of our 
Institute. 
There seems, therefore, to be ground for hope that, by the aid 
of Teachers in our Colleges and Schools, and of laymen with 
leisure and taste for scientific work,— some of whom have been 
our main supporters in the past,—we may be able at present to 
maintain, and in future to increase, the activity of our Institute. 
Where there is interesting work to be done, we may have con- 
fidence that workers will not fail. 
And that leads me to attempt to make a synopsis of the work 
which the Institute has to do, to ask how far we have been 
doing it, and to make some suggestions as to the best mode of 
doing those portions of it which seem hitherto to have been left 
undone. 
