PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. iii 



all books are now readily accessible. The Provincial Museum also, 

 as soon as it is practicable to move it, is to find a new and more 

 commodious home in the Technical College. These changes mark 

 an important advance. When they are completed the whole of the 

 large and valuable equipment in museum and library will be for 

 the first time readily accessible to every scientific worker who wishes 

 ta use it. 



We enter upon the new session of the Institutes' work with a 

 membership of 93 including 74 ordinary and associate and 19 

 corresponding members. Ten years ago we had 100 ordinary and 

 associate and 25 corresponding members, a total of 125 members. 

 Judged by these statistics,, we should have to admit that instead 

 of growing we had declined twenty- five per cent. It is only fair 

 to remember, however, that on account of the successive primings 

 to which our Ifsts have been subjected in recent years, the decline 

 shown has been nominal rather than real and that our effective 

 membership has probably been maintained. We must also recall 

 that within a few years a flourishing sister society, the Engineering 

 Society, has been organized, and that it appeals in considerable 

 measure to the same constituency as the Institute does. Making 

 due allowance for these considerations, the fact remains that while 

 there has probably been no real decline, we have not grown as we 

 ought. It would be too hasty to draw the conclusion that our 

 younger men are not furnishing their due proportion of investi- 

 gators. To go no further back than ten years, I can recall at least 

 ten young men who while here contributed one or more papers to 

 the Institute, and of whom few or none are now in the Province. 

 If we could have diverted to our own Transactions the researches 

 which these young men have published since leaving us and which 

 have gone to enlarge the stock of knowledge under other auspices 

 than ours, we should have much less reason to complain of lack of 

 scientific activity. We are, in fact, in this as in some other respects, 

 paying the tribute to larger communities which, it would seem, 

 comparatively small communities are obliged to pay. 



Within the last decade the people of Xova Scotia have come to 

 a higher appreciation of the value of scientific education, and the 

 facilities for scientific work have niuch increased. For evi- 



