64 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VIII. 
more desirable locality. Many of our most valued members are connected 
with the University, and it would certainly be advantageous that our 
library could be with convenience consulted by them. And it would suit 
the members generally better that our place of meeting should be further 
up town. And yet it is by no means desirable that the Institute should 
become a mere adjunct to the University. We have a mission of our own 
distinctly different from that of the University, and must preserve our own 
individuality. At the same time, a quasi-alliance will be of benefit to both 
institutions. I do not mean any definite formal agreement, but only such 
alliance as contiguity of place may afford for the promotion of those studies 
that are common to both. 
The Canadian Institute was at first designed as an association of engin- 
eers, surveyors, and architects, but it has since broadened out, and now 
we put no limits to the objects of study. All science is within our pur- 
view. We aim at occupying in Canada a place similar to that of The British 
Association for the advancement of science in Great Britain. Indeed our 
practice is even broader than that of the British Association, for an exami- 
nation of the titles of papers read at our meetings and published in our 
Transactions will discover numerous papers on literature, classical and 
modern, on history, on the fine arts, none of which are ever touched by the 
British Association. It was here that were first read those learned and 
ingenious papers on Roman Epigraphy by Dr. McCaul, which were afterwards 
collected and published as ‘‘Britanno-Roman Inscriptions.’ Here also 
were read those delightful sketches by Dr. Scadding, which developed into 
his book on ‘Toronto of Old.”” Many others might be mentioned. We have 
even had occasional papers dealing with some branches of English Law, 
which many persons may think has very little relation to Science. Those 
who have suffered in pocket or otherwise in consequence of the technicali- 
ties of pleading or the eccentricities of judges and juries may be pardoned 
for agreeing with the declaration of Mr. Bumble that ‘‘the law is a ass, a 
idiot ;”’ and it would be hard to convince them that the Law is the perfection 
of reason, as it has been asserted to be. It makes a great difference from 
what standpoint one views the Law. ‘To an outsider contemplating the 
vast mass of the customary or common law of England, of the so-called 
equity principles that have been established through the instrumentality 
of the Court of Chancery, of the statutes enacted in the course of hundreds 
of years, of the judge-made laws embodied in the countless volumes of 
Reports of judicial decisions, it may well seem that the English law is a hope- 
less jumble of confusion. But so is external nature. To the superficial 
gaze, the world is all confusion. The earth, the air, the sea, the forests, 
the rocks, animals, plants, sun, moon, and stars, to the untutored savage 
appear to be ruled only by caprice. He sees no order in the universe; the 
phenomena of Nature are but the acts of some malignant Moloch whose 
