JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. ■ 1 5 



and reminding our members of some facts they may have lost 

 sight of. To do this, I think it would be well to look back at our 

 history. The Hamilton Association was instituted on November 

 2nd, 1857, and continued its meetings regularly to the close of the 

 year i860. Then there was an interregnum of irregular meetings 

 till 187 1, when what I shall call the 2nd epoch of our history 

 ensued ; it lasted for five years and was followed by another inter- 

 regnum of four years. Since 1880 the Association has been in 

 active operation. In the first volume of our Transactions, the fact is 

 recorded that the annual meeting held in May, 1884, was the one 

 hundreth meeting of the Association, and since that time we have 

 had more than a hundred additional meetings. The Association 

 was incorporated in the year 1883. 



When the Asssociation was instituted it was customary for the 

 members to afiix their names in a book to the by-laws, in token of 

 their submission to the same, and the book, which is still in existence, 

 therefore contains some valuable autographs. Unfortunately, of 

 late years, this very laudable practice has fallen into disuse ; as a 

 matter of fact the last name, or last but one, is that of Thos. Wm. 

 Reynolds, but I am thankful to say that many useful and hard 

 working members have joined the Association in the thirteen years 

 since that time. As this book shows, our membership from the 

 very outset has been composed of those well known, not only in our 

 own community, but in the Province, and in fact the Dominion ; it 

 will, therefore, perhaps not be out of place to refer to some of them, 

 many of whom you will notice in the list of officers published at the 

 front of the Proceedings. The Association, as I have already 

 mentioned, has had 14 Presidents, and to the best of my knowledge 

 1 1 of them are still alive, most of them being still active members. 



The first name in the Signature Book is that of the first Presi- 

 dent, and it has but to be mentioned to recall in the minds of many 

 that sturdy old Scotchman, Rev. WiUiam Ormiston, D. D., who was 

 so thrilling with energy that it seemed to affect even the tips of his 

 hair, to judge from his appearance and the portraits of him to be 

 seen in so many of our homes. His ist Vice-President and succes- 

 sor in the presidential chair the following year was Dr. John Rae, 

 so well known as the discoverer of Sir John Franklin's remains, and 

 who only died within the last few years. On the resumption of the 



