PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. xcvii 



I am informed that ever active and industrious, he had recently 

 completed a History of the Fathers of the Presbyterian Church in 

 Nova Scotia. 



Dr. Patterson's work in science was subsidiary to his historical labors, 

 and necessarily lessened in amount. He was naturally interested in 

 Archaeology, and in this respect conferred a favor on the Province by 

 making a large collection of articles illustrating the life of our Indians 

 in pre historic days. He presented this valuable collection to Dalhousie 

 College, where it is available to all students of the subject, and described 

 it in a paper read before the Institute. 



As a historian his attention was naturally drawn to the alterations 

 which languages have undergone in consequence of changes of environ- 

 ment. On this subject he published papers in the Transactions of the 

 American Folk Lore Society, of the Royal Society of Canada, and in our 

 Proceedings. We owe to his historical interest not only the valuable 

 historical papers published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 Canada, and the Nova Scotia Historical Society, but also such ethnologi- 

 cal papers as " The Beothiks," published by the Royal Society, and 

 geographical papers such as "The Magdalen Islands," in our Transactions, 

 and " Sable Island," in those of the Royal Society. 



A full list of his publications down to 1894 may be found in the 

 Transactions of the Royal Society for that year, and a list of his subse- 

 quent papers will probably be published by the same Society. 



Dr. Patterson was noted for his diligence in collecting facts, and for 

 the amount of research he expended on every subject he took up. 



Few for instance, who read a history of one of our counties, realize 

 that these annals of recent times require an enormous amount of work in 

 collection of data, and nearly as much more in the separation and accre- 

 tion of the essential. Similarly his Folk Lore papers gave evidence of 

 most minute and painstaking enquiry. 



Scholarly in his sermons, keen and tenacious in his editorial work, 

 painstaking in his researches and polished in his writings, he has shown 

 what can be done by the student, even when confined by fate to an out- 

 lying district of the literary and scholastic world. His example. is a 

 good one for all to follow, if not to surpass ; and his work in its way was 

 performed precisely as our work as members of the Institute of Science 

 should be performed, that is by patient enquiry and research, followed 



