1890-91.] 



CELTIC, ROMAX AND GREKK TYPES. 



189 



Casgrain's Legendes Canadiennes, a copy of Gagnon's Chansons 

 Canadiens, our publications on cosmic time, a copy of the Dominion 

 Illustrated with views of our university buildings, a copy of the McGill 

 College Gazette, and a paper on the position and prospect of the 

 French race in Canada, of which I have an English translation which 

 may be read to our historical section, after its publication in France. I 

 will not now quote any detached passages but will give you a table I 

 constructed from our census tables of 1881. 



When I said it was probable that in a hundred years there would be in 

 the basin of the St. Lawrence and adjacent regions as many French 

 speaking people as there are Frenchmen in France, there was some little 

 of what the French reporters call "sensation." 



I cannot think the discussions were important. I was expecting to 

 hear some valuable paper on the increase or decline of the Latin 

 languages, where they are in contact with others ; on the extent to which 

 each of the chief Latin languages has mixed with others; on its nearness in 

 the important particulars of structure and pronunciation to the original ; 

 on the increase or diminution in the use of root words of other origin ; on 

 the prospects of these languages in new fields — America, Africa, Oceania; 

 on their adaptation to art and science, and their uses therein, together 

 with their influence on the peoples who use them, as bringing them near 

 to or keeping them from modern tendencies in science, commerce, and 

 religion. But I am compelled to observe that the main subject of dis- 

 cussion was how the French Government could be best induced to grant 

 a further sum of money for making continued investigations into the dia- 

 lects ox paiois of the South of France, and by whom that sum should be 

 expended. Professor Tourtoulon, who had received a Government 

 subvention some years before to make a report thereon, had in charge a 

 resolution with this object, but as no report had yet seen the light, 

 and some other persons wished for a share of the public money going, it 



