110 THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
are comparatively but few who have the necessary qualifications for 
handling such subjects. What then may be expected of a young 
Province—not yet a century old—in which the great majority 
are occupied in acquiring or securing the means of sub- 
sistence or comfort—in which there are necessarily but few that 
are so highly educated as to have reached the point of 
knowing what has been accomplished in each department and what 
remains to be done—and in which, of those few that have the requi- 
site qualifications, the greater number, in consequence of the require- 
ments of their official or social position, can find but little time for the 
prosecution of those subjects of study to which they would desire 
to devote their leisure? Let me add to this the want of libraries, 
museums, and instruments, such as would be necessary to place inves- 
tigators here in an equal position with labourers in the same fields of 
research in an European capital. Such considerations as these must 
induce us rather to feel satisfied than discontented with what we have 
done during the past year. And yet I doubt not that more might 
have been done—I doubt not that more will be done; for I am persuaded 
that some of our members, well qualified to give effective aid, are 
deterred from even making the attempt by apprehensions which I 
cannot but regard as ul founded. Some of those, with whom I have 
spoken on the subject, seemed to think that discoveries were hopeless 
under the circumstances in which we are placed, except, indeed, in 
those investigations which have for their object the peculiarities of 
the region which we inhabit. The broad Atlantic, say they, inter- 
poses between them and the objects of their study—all that can be 
done by them is to form probable conjectures, which sight might 
materially modify. And yet the history of some of the greatest 
discoveries in our time shews the fallacy of this reasoning. LeVerrier 
and Adams, by the force of mathematical reasoning, had discovered 
the existence and calculated the position of Neptune before mortal 
eye had ever looked upon its orb; the investigations of Bessel and 
Peters had found out the companion of Sirius before it was visible 
through any telescope ; Sir Roger Murchison announced the existence 
of auriferous strata in Australia before the labour of the miner was 
rewarded by a single grain of gold; Bunsen predicted the presence 
of a new alkaline metal before a particle of Cesium or Rubidium had 
ever been exposed to view; Grotefend made the first step towards the 
reading of the cuneiform language, with the aid merely of engraved 
representations of some inscriptions, before he had ever seen a tablet 
or acylinder. Why, then, may not similar results be attained here 
