president's address. 7 



for some time beforehand extraordinarily wet or dry years with 

 some approach to certainty. The great practical benefit of such a 

 prediction to a country so much interested in agi-iculture as our own 

 will be plain to everybody ; and I call attention here to the fact 

 of Mr. Elvins's right of priority, because it has not been properly 

 acknowledged in all quarters. In one quarter only has such acknow- 

 ledgment been made, viz.: in Pi'of. S. F. Baird's "Annual Record of 

 iScience and Industry " for 1871. That Miss Gierke, in her lately 

 published " History of Astronomy," should have overlooked this 

 matter is, perhaps, not altogether surprising ; but that Prof. Norman 

 Lockyer, whom Mr. Elvins kept constantly informed as to his inves- 

 tigations, should have entirely ignored his claims to priority, and 

 have given all the honours to Mr. Meldrum, of Mauritius, is, to 

 say the least, unpleasantly remarkable. The fact that, for some 

 reason unknown to myself, Mr. Elvins's results were never published 

 in the Canadian Journal, has no doubt been the principal cause of 

 this want of acknowledgment. Ill-health has for many years sus- 

 pended Mr. Elvins's labours, but I am glad to say that, this cause 

 "being for the present happily removed, we may look for further valua- 

 He results from their resumption. 



II.— MEMORIALS. 



The selections I have just presented from the subjects of Papers 

 read before this Institute abundantly prove that the members have 

 always been in the habit of doing a good deal of pretty hard thinkino- 

 on subjects of the most practical kind, and so contributing to the 

 solution of problems of the greatest interest to the public ; and a 

 consideration of the number and nature of Memorials presented to 

 the Canadian and Provincial Grovernments by the Institute! from 

 time to time will show that they were men of action as well as of 

 thought, who were wide enough awake to give effect to their ideas 

 since we find that, in every instance but one, the memorials were 

 successful. In the decade from 1853 to 1863 alone. I find no less 

 than five of these successful memorials recorded in our " Proceedino-g," 

 as follows : 



1. Up to the year 1853 the magnetic observing station at Toronto 

 had been carried on at the expense of the Imperial Government, and 

 under the direction of officers of the Royal Artillery. In this year, 

 however, the observatory was about to be discontinued. Capt. (now 



