President's Address. 201 



history. In mechanics' institutes and some grammar schools 

 this branch is made part of the curriculum of study, and in 

 several of the Government departments, a certain amount of 

 knowledge in geology and botany is required before candi- 

 dates can pass their examination. This requirement will ere 

 long probably be extended, and for this and other reasons 

 it is highly desirable that the elements of natural history 

 should be taught in all our public seminaries. 



Advanced Science. — This branch of the subject must now 

 for a few minutes occupy our attention. 



Have the higher and dogmatic branches of physical science 

 really advanced within the period of this inquiry ? Some 

 doubt it, at least affect to doubt it. My own opinion is 

 that great progress has been made in all branches of science. 

 The numerous ably -conducted periodicals amply bear out 

 this result. From the voluminous record of facts and 

 observations continuously being arrayed and discussed in a 

 thoroughly systematic manner by trained experts in the 

 various branches of science, we see the advancement in 

 regular marching order — the precision of details, the breadth 

 and freedom of speculation, from which the fanciful is care- 

 fully eliminated, the recorded results, are all admirable in 

 their way. If we turn from the journals to the floating 

 treatises, and then to the many able monographs, as for 

 instance those of the Eay Society, the Palseontographical 

 Society, the illustrated work^ of Louis Agassiz and others, 

 we must be satisfied that never was there before a regiment 

 of so able and so highly-qualified writers engaged on genera 

 and species, or, to speak more widely and properly, on science 

 at large. 



In the course of the last half-century, chemistry has added 

 some thirty new substances to the list of elementary bodies, 

 and the greatly-improved methods of analysis have done 

 much service to other branches of science, as for instance 

 mineralogy. Till a comparatively recent period the con- 

 stituent parts of a mineral were, except in some few in- 

 stances, entirely unknown, leaving them just to be guessed 

 at ; now all this is changed. I^o new specimen is ever placed 

 on the shelf of a public museum at random. The integrity of 



