10 The Royal Society of Canada. 



solitudes and changeful climate. These are unwritten poems 

 which have impressed themselves on the minds of our people more 

 than anything man has yet said or done, and he who most truly 

 interprets these great unwritten histories and poems will build up 

 the most lasting fame. For this reason he rejoiced that the 

 Society embraced both literature and science, and he was 

 profoundly convinced that it was for the highest interest of 

 Canada that, while its scientific men should be men of culture, its 

 literary men should be men of scientific knowledge and scientific 

 habits of thought. 



Hon. Dr. Chauveau, Vice-President of the Society, followed 

 in French. He said that this was almost the second inauguration 

 of the Royal Society, which had been already founded and 

 inaugurated by His Excellency the Governor-General, but which 

 had since obtained permission from Her Majesty to assume the 

 name of the Royal Society, which it was doing most auspiciously 

 now under the joint presidency of His Excellency and Her Royal 

 Highness. He said that the very excellent remarks of His 

 Excellency and the most exhaustive address of the President, 

 Principal Dawson, did not leave him much to say ; still he would 

 point out two great and most desirable results of the establish- 

 ment of this Society. One was to make our literature and our 

 scientific exertions more widely known in other countries, and the 

 other, which was perhaps more difficult to obtain, was to make the 

 two great elements of this country, French and English, better 

 known to each other. 



Several comparisons had been resorted to in order to illustrate 

 the estrangement which had so long existed between these two 

 sections in many respects, as well as in those of literature and 

 science. Xot unfrequently the two races had bsen compared to- 

 the waters of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence, which ran for a 

 long tima side by side without mixing together — but still they 

 mixed. He himself had alluded elsewhere to the famous stair- 

 case of the historical chateau of Ohanibord, which was so 

 constructed that two parsons could ascend at the same time without 

 seeing each other, it being a kind of double staircase, and in the 

 progress which these two races made towards their common destiny 

 they also seemed in many respects to ignore each other, meeting 

 occasionally on the political platform. 



