114 THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
their manifestations in the most distant parts of the earth, but 
embraced as a whole it may be within periods too great to have yet 
been comprehended in the range of time over which the longest 
series of magnetic observations have extended. It may be that the 
full significance of the phenomena now being recorded in the Toronto 
Magnetic Observatory will only be understood when their normal 
progression completes a larger cycle, not of years but generations ; 
and other centuries shall, by our aid, perceive the compass of great 
general laws. The relations already traced between magnetism, 
electricity, light, heat, and mechanical force, and all the singular 
glimpses of thermodynamics reducible to well-established laws by 
known mechanical principles, manifestly point to future disclosures 
of some comprehensive truth, as simple, yet perhaps even more wide- 
embracing than Newton’s law: a grand law of the universe that 
shall indicate long concealed relations between that vital force which 
is controled by mental volition and animal instincts, and the mechan- 
ical forces which control inorganic matter, and bind suns, and planets, 
and systems into one. 
Thus do those little-heeded labors of our magnetic observers unite 
us as fellow-workers with the noble phalanx of intellectual toilers; 
whose far-reaching thoughts and speculations wander through unil- 
lumined vistas of the coming centuries, and search for revelations of 
truths which the angels desire to look into; and the full significance 
of which, I doubt not, the spirits of just men made perfect rejoice to 
employ their renovated powers in mastering. But, while thus stand- 
ing on 
“This narrow isthmus ’twixt two boundless seas, 
The past, the future, two eternities, 
man—unconsciously stimulated by his immortal destiny,—desires to 
look into the unseen truths of a great future ; it is also with no less 
characteristic zeal that he indulges in a wise retrospection ; and in 
this also we have our indefatigable Provincial phalanx of workers. 
The two Decades illustrative of Canadian paleontology, issued 
during the past year by the Geological Survey of Canada, minutely 
illustrate and describe evidences of life pertaining to formations 
dating within that primary paleozoic period in which the Geologist 
recognises the oldest traces of organic structure, at an epoch, the 
remoteness of which he dimly guesses at by hundreds of thousands 
of years. And of what use is it for us to learn of those long-perished 
