THIRD MEETING. 



THIRD MEETING. 



Third Meeting, 17th November, 1888, the President in the 

 chair. 



A communication was read from the Governor-General's 

 Secretary forwarding a despatch from the Colonial Secretary, 

 enclosing the reply of the President of the Orange Free 

 State to the proposal for the adoption of a Universal System 

 of Time Notation. 



Donations and exchanges since last meeting, 35, including 

 an autograph letter by W. L. Mackenzie to Horace Greeley, 

 dated 21st December, 1849, presented by Mr. George E. 

 Sears, for which thanks were voted. 



The following were elected Members : — Ojijatekha (J. Sero), 

 Arch. H. Young, B.A., and L. B. Stewart. 



Mr. W. Houston, M.A., read a paper on " The Science of 

 English." 



He began by detining the sense in which he used the tei'm 

 " English." In his opinion, the very essence of science was the in- 

 vestigation of a subject matter ; and the science of English was the 

 investigation of the way in which we expressed our thoughts in the 

 English language. The science of English was treated as having four 

 aspects, as follows: — (1) The nature of the sentence, as making a 

 statement, which gives us the science of grammar ; (2) the nature of 

 words as having meaning and form, which gives the science of phi- 

 lology ; (3) the nature of prose-structure, which gives rhetoric ; and 

 (4) the nature of verse- structure, which gives prosody. Various lines 

 of investigation under each hea.d were briefly indicated. 



Mr. VanderSmissen referred to the imperfect way in which 

 grammar was taught. The teaching was too mechanical. 

 What is most neglected is the relation of words to one an- 

 other in a sentence. The knowledge of the forms of the 

 words was not sufficient. It was surprising, for instance, how 



