Tfie Presidents' Addresses. 31 



lated and recomposed his small particular share of concrete 

 nature, and inspire him with those vague but hopeful sug- 

 gestions of ideas which we call Learning, but which are not 

 Science." 



If the science of Canada should profit by the matured 

 wisdom of Professor Lesley, our educationists have greater 

 need to listen to Sir Lyon Playfair's address. It would be 

 idle to maintain that education in Canada is in an ideal state 

 of perfection. We are haunted by the phantom of a literary 

 and classical' training which is a reality in England. If the 

 literary system of education is out of date there, it is a 

 sham here. "In a scientific and keenly competitive age," 

 the President says, " an exclusive education in the dead 

 languages is a perplexing anomaly." It is a still greater 

 anomaly where the conditions of society are altered, and 

 education is generally allowed to be a training for business 

 rather than the acquisition of polish. 



Sir Lyon Playfair's address naturally opens with remarks 

 suggested by last year's visit of the Association to Montreal, 

 in the course of which he pays graceful compliments to 

 Canada, and alludes to Sir William Dawson's selection for 

 the Presidency at Birmingham in 1886. 



"Our last meeting at Montreal," he says, " was a notable 

 event in the life of the British Association, and even marked 

 a distinct epoch in the' history of civilization. It was by 

 no mere accident that the constitution of the Association 

 enabled it to embrace all parts of the British Empire. Science 

 is truly Catholic and is bounded only by the universe. 

 . . . The inhabitants of Canada received us with open 

 arms, and the science of the Dominion and that of the United 

 Kingdom were welded. . . . Our great men are their 

 great men ; our Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns belong to 

 them as much as to ourselves ; our Newton, Dalton, Fara- 

 day, and Darwin are their men of science as much as they 

 are ours. Thus a common possession and mutual sympathy 

 made the meeting in Canada a successful effort to stimulate 

 the progress of science, while it established, at the same 

 time, the principle that all people of British origin — and I 

 would fain include our cousins in the United States — possess 



