lO JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



refreshing to the senses after a long and dreary winter, and after 

 having drunk deeply of the pleasures of the summer season, we are 

 now permitted to participate in the beautiful and picturesque scenery 

 which the autumn presents in the various tinted slopes and dales, 

 sadly suggestive of a summer that is gone and reminding us of the 

 near approach of winter ; to those who welcome truth in whatever 

 phase she is discoverable in the physico-vital records of a past and 

 passing world ; to those who cherish ghmpses of the infinite, and 

 would fain tear aside the veil that separates the seen from the unseen ; 

 to those, in short, who look through Nature up to Nature's God, I 

 may be privileged to speak a word or two to-night. 



There never was a time in the history of the world when the 

 demand for workers in all the departments of Natural Science was so 

 widespread as it is at the present day, consequently we hear of many 

 able and scholarly men devoting their time and talents to the study 

 of the sciences, and as a result of their investigations, we learn almost 

 daily of some new discovery in economic or physical science. These 

 discoveries, which are so frequently announced through the medium 

 of the press, have the effect of stimulating other workers in this great 

 field to a laudable ambition and a desire to communicate something 

 new to the world. We might ask in how many cases has the student, 

 in any branch of science, not been rewarded in a greater or less 

 degree by some important discovery. 



It is a pecuhar fact that men of leisure do not, as a rule, devote 

 their time and talent in the direction of the most entertaining and 

 fascinating branch of education. The human mind is naturally in- 

 quisitive, and as such, can find full scope for all its energies in the 

 scientific field. A thirst after knowledge is in itself a refreshing 

 symptom of healthy progress, though it may in some minds result in 

 the mere fact of gratifying a desire to be entertained, instead of 

 affording that peculiar and substantial satisfaction as experienced in 

 the acquisition of further definite knowledge in some one of the 

 branches of scientific study. 



In the daily walks of life, whatever direction our duties may take, 

 or whatever character they may assume, nothing is more essential 

 than a well regulated mind, able to observe, to store up and to form 

 a correct estimate of the value of facts, and also to draw deductions 

 based upon a reasonable hypothesis, to their proper conclusions as 

 warranted by the circumstances, and the possession of an intellect of 



