194 OPENING ADDRESS—MACGREGOR. 
that our Transactions should be kept at least up to their present 
volume and value. 
For many reasons the publications which have accumulated 
during the last seventy-five years have neither been so numerous 
as they might have been, nor so well preserved as they should 
have been; and, for want of proper cases and rooms, they have 
been lying in a state in which it was impossible to use them. 
Lately, however, the Institute has been engaged in reducing them 
to order, and has bound up all the volumes which were found to 
be complete. It is our intention now to get as many as possible 
of the incomplete works rendered complete, and to aiid largely to 
our list of exchanges; so that if we are able to maintain the 
publication of our own Transactions, we shall very soon acquire a 
valuable Library of the Transactions of other Societies. 
There are many works, however, in which records of pro- 
gress in Natural Science are contained, which cannot be obtained 
in this way, but must be purchased ; and in cases in which such 
works are too expensive to be purchased by individual investi- 
gators, and are required for purposes of investigation, it would 
seem to be the duty of the Institute to obtain them. Here our 
poverty makes judicious selection necessary. But it may be 
hoped that as our Library increases and is found to be of prac- 
tical utility, funds available for this purpose may be found also. 
And lastly, it is desirable, if not necessary, that in many cases 
the Institute should provide for investigators instruments which 
are too costly to be purchased by individuals themselves. Our 
_funds have always been too small to enable us to make any 
extensive provision of this kind. We have recently, however, 
purchased an excellent microscope for the use of our members,— 
such an instrument as individual members could not be expected 
to purchase for themselves,—and good work has already been 
done by means of it. There are many instruments of this kind 
that the Institute ought to possess, and that doubtless will be 
acquired as time goes on and funds increase. 
Such, then, is a rough sketch of the work which, as I conceive 
it, the Institute has to do; and it will be seen that while in 
some departments we have been active and successful, in others 
