OPENING ADDRESS.—MACGREGOR. 333 
founded all at once, the public, which is impatient of expenditure 
without immediate results, would not unlikely conclude in a very 
few years that the expenditure was too great for the results; and 
the legislature might find it necessary to withdraw the grant by 
which the school was sustained. In such matters it is good policy 
to hasten slowly, and in the case of the technical school the best 
mode of slow hastening would seem to be to develop our museum 
with an efficient director at its head, and to let him, by organising 
courses of lectures and practical classes in connection with it, 
make it the nucleus about which a technical school would 
gradually grow, as the demand for scientific instruction would 
gradually increase. As the importance of our mineral resources 
would seem to imply that the director should have a special 
knowledge of Geology and Mineralogy, these would naturally be 
the subjects in which he might be expected te give instruction 
himself. In other departments lectures might be given at the 
outset by volunteers, the lecture room and appliances being 
furnished in the museum itself. As little additional expenditure 
would be involved in the provision of these lecture courses, the 
occasional lapsing of classes through lack of students would, so 
far as the permanence of the school is concerned, be of no 
moment. Gradually the occasional classes would become regular, 
and the small classes would become large; and ultimately it 
might be hoped the demand for instruction would become so 
great that the volunteer lecturers might be replaced by a per- 
manent staff. This seems to be in our present circumstances the 
only feasible way of obtaining the technical school of which we 
stand so much in need. 
The Curator might make the Museum an active educational 
centre in another way, viz., by distributing among the academies 
and high schools of the Province small collections illustrating the 
various departments of natural history. Such a course would 
facilitate to a very great extent the introduction of science 
teaching into our schools. 
If it be admitted that the development of our museum, in- 
volving as it does the appointment of an efficient curator and 
rendering possible the provision of scientific instruction, is a 
