14 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
a, few generations more shall have hopelessly corrupted the spelling and 
pronunciation of those and many other aboriginal names still to be 
found on the map, of all monuments of a race and language, perhaps, 
the most enduring ; how will philologists puzzle themselves over diffi- 
culties which hundreds now living could remove, but which to them may 
be as inscrutable as the language of Nineveh. I allude to these subjects 
here, because they offer an immediate field for the exertions of the 
Institute, and is one which it is peculiarly able to enter upon, as includ- 
ing among its members so many gentlemen whose pursuits must be 
constantly bringing them into contact with objects of the kind referred to. 
Then again in Natural History. Only last summer an American pro- 
fessor and his pupils, chose the neighborhood of Toronto for the scene 
of their search after new and undescribed fishes. I forget what the 
professor’s success was, but the fact shews his remarkable confidence in 
our own neglect of the objects around us. I remember once, in the 
Island of St. Helena, sending a colored servant to a distant and some- 
what inaccessible rock, called the Barn, to fetch me some specimens of 
land shell, reputed on the island to have been long extinct, but of which 
dead specimens were known to be abundant in that locality. To my 
own surprise, Joseph, who had no lazy theory to save his own exertions, 
brought me back half-a-bushel of living ones. The dwellers in James- 
town had reckoned much too confidently on the authority of their 
ignorance. And if their little island—smaller than any Canadian 
county, and settled by Europeans a century before an English foot had 
been set in Upper Canada—could yield such novelties, we need not 
deem our search hopeless here. Turn which way we will, enquiries 
meet us on which an active mind may employ its best energies, and yet 
glean but the surface treasures of that exhaustless mine which Art and 
Nature offer to human industry. But, gentlemen, we should under- 
value this Institute if we regarded it merely as a means of amassing 
information, however valuable, or of contributing to personal distinction, 
however well-earned. It is in the refreshing influence of mind upon 
mind, in the re-union of those whom separate pursuits or different walks 
in life tend otherwise to put asunder,—in holding up to practice the 
mirror of theory, in animating theory with the life of practice, that 
societies like this, when actively conducted, exercise so beneficial an 
effect. Who can tell how much encouragement may be given by a 
word of sympathy ; how often a friendly hint may clear up a difficulty, 
or timely discussion avert a blunder? Or what essential moral benefit 
it may be to some minds, in teaching lessons of modesty, of diligence, 
or of patience, to be brought into contact with other minds of greater 
gifts and higher attainments, and learn that the place they aspire to 
Ee TER ee Oe ge eee 
