180 Canadian Record of Science. 



The Annual Meeting of the Society took place on Monday- 

 evening, May 31st, 1886, the President, Sir J. William Daw- 

 son, in the chair. 



The minutes of the last annual meeting and of the previ- 

 ous monthly meeting were read and approved. The min- 

 utes of the last council meeting were also read. 



Rev. John Nichols was proposed as an ordinary member 

 and Bertie Nichols as a junior member. 



Dr. J. A. Beaudry was elected a member of the Society. 



The President's annual address was next delivered. 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, 

 C.M.G., F.R.S. 



We close, this evening, what may be regarded as a suc- 

 cessful session of the Natural History Society of Montreal, 

 which has now been pursuing its useful work for fifty-four 

 years. In the past session our museum has been cared for 

 and augmented. Our library has been arraDged and cata- 

 logued. Our monthly meetings have been well sustained, 

 with larger attendance than in some previous years, and 

 with valuable and instructive papers. The Eecord of 

 Science has been regularly issued and circulated, and, as 

 usual, has been truly a record of scientific progress and dis- 

 covery. The Society has contributed to popular education 

 by its course of free lectures, and financially we are in a 

 solvent condition. Most of these matters will be brought 

 under your notice in detail in the various reports to be pre- 

 sented this evening. The only one which it falls to me to 

 discuss in this address is the scientific work of the Society. 

 Before entering on this, however, I would pause to make 

 two suggestions. One is to wealthy citizens disposed to aid 

 in the diffusion of popular science. The Sommerville endow- 

 ment has hitherto been the only one in Montreal intended 

 to promote absolutely free popular scientific lectures. In 

 this it has borne good fruit, since we have had on this en- 

 dowment every year, for nearly half a century, a course of 

 lectures of a high scientific character, many of them equal 

 to those of any scientific course in the world, to which all 

 of our citizens have had free aocess. It is not easy to esti- 



