THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. LVL— MAEOH, 1865. 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDEESS. 



BY THE HON. VICE-CHANCELLOK MOWAT. 



Read before the Institute, 2\.st January, 1865. 



Gentlemen of the Canadian Institute : 



I feel deeply the great honor you have done me in asking me to 

 become your President. The honor was a most unexpected one, 

 and I confess it was not without some feeling of dismay that I 

 learned that your choice had fallen upon me. I knew well the 

 value of your Association, having, indeed, been a member of the 

 Institute almost ever since its establishment ; but the learning with 

 which my busy life has made me familiar is not the learning which 

 you cultivate ; the sciences which I have made a special study, and 

 the arts with which I have had to deal, are not the Sciences^or the 

 Arts to which, under your Charter, your attention is restricted. 

 But the choice of me for your President is not my act, but your 

 own: and I feel that it would be unbecoming and ungracious of me 

 to decline the position amongst you which it is your wish, for some 

 reason or other, that for the present year I should occupy. 



Your Institute has two objects in view. Eirst and principally, 

 you desire to do something for the advancement of Science. 

 You have done something for it, and will, I doubt not, yet do more. 

 You number amongst your members some who have already a Euro- 

 pean reputation ; and many of the papers which have been read and 

 discussed at your meetings have been deemed worthy of publication 



Vol. X. c 



