THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 109 
and her western scions: it is something to know that Science has 
gained new and important truths, interesting and replete with promise, 
alike for the Old World and the New. 
Thus it is that in pursuing one line of inquiry we are almost imper- 
ceptibly led into another and seemingly totally independent one. 
Thus it is that the connexion of the physical sciences is ever reveal- 
ing itself in new phases; and with every extension of our knowledge 
we are the more taught to recognize in them an intimately related 
sister-band. Geology and Natural History, Astronomy, Electricity, 
and Magnetism, are all found to have their points of contact, and 
mutually minister to each others completeness, while each presents 
its special claims on our sympathy and interest. In the observation 
of magnetic phenomena, and the patient accumulation of data calcu- 
lated to determine the solar magnetic influence on the earth, the laws 
of periodicity connected with terrestrial magnetic force, and the search 
for those hidden truths which comprehend the mysterious power by 
which the electrician already triumphs over time and space, Toronto, 
with its efficient staff of workers at the Provincial Observatory, 
already takes a prominent place. The novel truths to which Le 
Verrier’s observations seem to point relative to the physical consti- 
tution of the sun involve new views, which if once established must 
modify the whole theory of solar magnetic influence, and lead to 
further investigations of the apparent relations between the changes 
observed on the cloudy envelope of the solar photosphere, and the 
periodical changes of variation in the elements of the earth’s mag- 
netic force. Theory and observation go hand in hand in demonstra- 
ting the physical characteristics of the sun, and the influences which 
control the genial despotism with which that luminary reigns supreme, 
‘the monarch of our system. The accelerated motion of Enke’s 
comet at each return has sufficed to suggest the abandonment of the 
idea that planetary and cometary motions are performed in vacuo, and 
leads to the belief that space is everywhere pervaded by an ether, too 
rare to effect a perceptible change on the motions of the planets, but 
sufficient by its resistance to subject such attenuated substances as the 
comets more completely to the attractive force of gravity, and urge 
them onward, with an ever diminishing orbit and increasing velocity, 
until they fall into the sun. These strange wanderers of the heavens 
that sweep at times their streaming train across the sky, “ with fear 
of change perplexing nations,” are thus shown, in their attenuated 
