XXIV PROCEEDINGS. 



Dalhousie. But all this wealth of facilities failed during the past 

 year to produce the output of the old strenuous days when we met 

 in the poorly lighted, badly seated, and primitively warmed and 

 ventilated museum on Cheapside. 



It is true, the Institute of 1863 has lost heavily by emigration. 

 The medical doctors formed an association of their own. Those 

 developing mining industries branched out into the Mining 

 Society, of Nova Scotia; and later the engineers swarmed 

 out to form their own hive. But while making allowance for all 

 this, there should surely be better conditions for the development 

 of the scientific cult to-day than ever before. It is therefore with 

 some disappointment I refer to the work of last year. It has not 

 come up to our improved opportunities. Our men of science have 

 been too completely engrossed in the increasingly exacting duties 

 of their various routine public services. We must not forget, 

 however, to keep the vestal fire of scientific research alive in this 

 focus of the community. That is a duty incumbent on everyone 

 engaged in scientific labor, and on every one seeing hope in the 

 scientific cult; 



We had three meetings during the past year. The retiring 

 President in the Annual address gave an able sketch of late pro- 

 gress in the production of organic compounds, and made sugges- 

 tions for our future work which we have not yet attempted to 

 energetically develop. 



At our February meeting Mr. Walter H. Prest advocated a 

 preliminary survey of Xova Scotians caves for possible natural 

 history or anthropological remains. Your Council supplied him 

 with some aid for such exploration, an account of the results of 

 which will be presented by Mr. Prest himself at this meeting. 



The May meeting brought out some valuable meteorological 

 notes by Mr. F. W. W. Doane,, C. E. ; a comparison of the monthly 

 mean temperaturs of Halifax and Plymouth on opposite sides of 

 the Atlantic by our ex-President, Dr. Henry S. Poole, F. R. S. 0., 

 who does not forget the Institute, although, absent from the 

 Province; a sketch of Mineral Occurrences in the Granites at New 

 Koss, Lunenburg County by Mr. A. L. McCallum, B. Sc. ; a paper 

 on the effect of gravity on the cencentration of solutions, by Mr. 



