88 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN" INSnTUTE. 



investment as our expenditure on canals and railroads. I approve of state aid to 

 railroads and canals in a new country, because transportation is one of our greatest 

 problems, but the first duty, the very first dvity of an intelligent country, is to know 

 what it has or may have to transport. 



In conclusion I should like to say a few words as to what we might reasonably 

 expect in the way of Dominion and Provincial surveys. We should have the 

 Dominion and Provincial surveys working out the topography in a far more minute 

 manner and on a greatly larger scale than at present. We should never again send 

 out a topographic party, a boundary party or a land surveyor laying out a base 

 line, without being accompanied by trained geologists and naturalists. The history 

 of our own Northern Ontario is an example of what we have failed to accomplish 

 in this respect. We should not only publish annually such broad truths of geology 

 and natural history as are gathered during these rapid topographic surveys, but we 

 should be engaged in our provincial surveys on reports dealing with the features 

 of each county separately, and in our Dominion Survey in working out special 

 problems of geologic or other scientific interest. For instance, in the United States 

 there are many complete monographs dealing with the iron ores of different 

 localities, or the coal, or natural gas, or the forestry conditions, or other problems 

 of great commercial importance. Have we no curiosity about our great areas of 

 iron ore, our really wonderful coal fields, and our other minerals ? Should we not 

 appreciate intelligent monographs on the treatment of refractory ores, on modern 

 mining machinery, on brick-making, salt-wells, gas-wells, and the many other 

 things so intelligently presented to the people by the State in more favoured 

 countries ? Of course we should. Let our Governments but try. 



And as to Public Museums. The Dominion Government at Ottawa and each 

 province, at its city of chief importance, should have a museum belonging to and 

 supported by the people. These museums should contain exhibits of the metallic 

 and non-metallic minerals of the country, both those of economic and of merely 

 scientific value, the forest trees, with the bark preserved, in say six feet sections, 

 cut also and partly polished, and each specimen accompanied by a small map 

 showing its habitat ; the fresh water and sea fishes, mounted after the modern 

 methods ; the fur-bearing animals, the game birds, and the birds of our forests, 

 fields and sea-coast, many of them mounted so as to tell a child their habits at a 

 glance ; the reptiles, crustaceans, insects, plants, indeed as complete a record of the 

 fauna and flora of the country as possible ; the rocks of stratigraphic importance and 

 all the varieties of fossils which can be gathered in this country ; the archaeological 

 and ethnological evidences of the races we have supplanted in Canada, and much 

 more that does not occur to me at the moment. I should not like to suggest a limit 

 of expenditure on such museums. The necessity of a new building at Ottawa is 

 admitted. The crime of leaving exposed to fire, in a wretched building never 

 intended to protect anything of value, the precious results of over fifty years of 

 collecting, has been pointed out in a recent official report. But the Government 

 seem deaf to such claims. I can only repeat that we are rich enough to bear the 

 cost with ease, but we are not intelligent enough to see our own interest in spending 

 the money. 



I have been careful to indicate that so far as this is an account of what has been 

 done in geology and natural history in Canada, it is mainly a record of work done 

 officially, that is for the governing bodies and not by individuals unassisted by 

 public money. But it must not be supposed that I am unmindful of the fund of 

 information which has reached the pviblic through the journals of the scientific 

 societies of Canada, some of which have been labouring for over half a century in this 

 field of higher education. Nor must I fail to acknowledge that such societies are, 

 as a rule, aided by public grants of money. It would have been a great pleasure 

 to have mentioned many of the writers and investigators who have contributed 

 gratuitously in the past to this fund of knowledge, but I can do no more than to 

 record here our gratitude to some of the living geologists — ^to Sir J. William 

 Dawson, Dr. G. F. Matthew, Prof. L. W. Bailey, Dr. J. W. Spencer, Dr. F. D. 

 Adams, Prof A. P. Coleman, Mgr. J. C. K. Laflamme, and all others who still 

 labour in the good cause, although not members of our Survey. I am aware that 

 I should add the names of many botanists, ornithologists, entomologists and other 



