499 



The President then addressed the Society as follows : 



GENTLEMEN, 



IN addressing you for the last time from this Chair, which by 

 your favour I have now occupied for a period of four years, it affords 

 me great gratification to be able to announce that all those measures 

 which were rendered necessary by our removal to this site, are now 

 completed, and we meet in an apartment which may be truly said to 

 be worthy of a Society which for near 200 years has taken the lead 

 in fostering a spirit of investigation into the laws of nature, and thus 

 promoting the best interests of its country and of mankind. 



I rejoice that our walls are once more adorned by pictures of 

 some of the most eminent of the many distinguished men, who by 

 their lives and discoveries have left an imperishable name to poste- 

 rity, and shed a halo of glory over the whole human race. Even as 

 amidst the ruins of lona our great moralist felt his religious en- 

 thusiasm powerfully aroused, so may the sight of these portraits 

 kindle in us and our successors an earnest desire to emulate the 

 virtues of those whom they represent that spirit of persevering 

 research which achieved such brilliant success that regard for truth 

 which deems no sacrifice too great when her interests are at stake 

 that modesty, the never-failing companion of genius, which, slightly 

 regarding results attained, is almost overpowered by the sense of 

 what remains to be accomplished. When we look at these memo- 

 rials of our predecessors, may we feel as the Romans of old, when 

 they beheld the statues of their ancestors ; they declared, " Cum ma- 

 jorum imagines intuerentur, vehementissime sibi animum ad virtutem 

 accendi ;" and yet, to use the words of the Grecian orator, Uaial <F av 

 ?i cfeA0oIs 6pw fteyav TOV dywva. Great is the competition indeed, and 

 few are the champions worthy to contend. 



In a former Address I expressed a hope that the late Government 

 would send an Expedition to the mouth of the Mackenzie River to 

 continue those magnetical observations, which had been so perse- 

 veringly and successfully carried out by Capt. Maguire, and from 

 which expedition important accessions to our knowledge of the mag- 

 netical laws were not unreasonably expected ; but unhappily these 

 hopes have not been realized. Our disappointment may possibly be 

 traced, partly to the dislike which seems to prevail to anything 



