PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE x 



cotian Jf nstttitte of <Srienc&- 



SESSION OF 1900-1901. 



ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING. 

 Legislative Council Chamber, Halifax, Wth November, 1900. 

 THE PRESIDENT, DR. A. H. MACKAY, in the chair. 



THE PRESIDENT addressed the Institute as follows : 

 GENTLEMEN, It has been customary at our Annual Meetings for the 

 retiring President to make a summary review of the year's work a sort 

 of annual inventory. In following this custom, were I speaking to the 

 general public, I would be required to give some kind of demonstration 

 of the object and value of such work as we are doing in line with similar 

 organizations in every civilized country. For those who see a fine 

 mushroom grow in one night are generally unaware of the one hundred 

 nights and the one hundred days during which its invisible white r 

 silken, threadlike mycelial cells were tunnelling the surrounding earth- 

 in myriad lines with ceaseless activity, so that when the appropriate- 

 time should come tens of thousands of microscopic tubular lines of 

 transport should simultaneously carry from every quarter the duly 

 assimilated matter to build up and complete in a few hours the visible- 

 and generally appreciated fruit. Every great discovery or invention o 

 modern times popularly considered great, is in like manner simply the- 

 fruit of the unostentatious, patient and continuous labor of a multitude 

 of seekers after knowledge of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 

 but the truth, in one or more regions of the infinite domain in which we 

 exist. Without these humble and severely accurate observations of fact 

 and measurements of force going on from year to year there can be no 

 PRO\ & TRANS. N. S. INST. Sci., VOL. X. PROC.-F.. 



(liii) 



