444 Canadian Record of Science. 



monthly meeting of the Society were read and confirmed. 



Mr. Eobert Keforcl and Dean Carmichael were proposed 

 for membership, and under suspension of the rules, these 

 gentlemen and Mr. W. JD. Lighthall were duly elected. 



In his annual address the President, Sir Wm. Dawson, 

 referred to the good and useful work done by the Society 

 in the past year, in maintaining and increasing its museum; 

 in providing an interesting and instructive course of free 

 lectures in physiological subjects by eminent specialists, 

 and of a character likely to be most beneficial to the large 

 audiences which had assembled to hear them ; in the con- 

 tinued publication of the Kecord of Science, and in the 

 commencement of a series of observations on underground 

 temperatures. He then referred to fourteen original papers 

 which had been read and discussed at the meetings. Of 

 these five had been geological, the others had related to 

 botany, zoology, ethnology and chemistry, and ten subjects 

 of a general character. These papers had been published 

 in the Eecord of Science and constituted an important con- 

 tribution to" scientific progress in this country. They show- 

 ed that the original work of members had been distributed 

 somewhat generally over the field cultivated by the society. 

 He noticed the contents of these papers, and showed that 

 while adding new facts to our knowledge of nature, several 

 of them were of a very practical and useful character. In 

 concluding this part of his remarks, he thanked the Pro- 

 vincial Government for the aid given to the publication of 

 the Eecord of Science, which he characterized as one of 

 the most useful and creditable exponents of Canadian scien- 

 tific work. He then referred to the movement for an Im- 

 perial geological union, which he had explained in one of 

 the meetings of the Society, which had been sanctioned 

 by many of the most eminent men in Great Britain and its 

 dependencies, and had been adopted by the Eoyal Society 

 of Canada at its recent meeting. He hoped it would form 

 the beginning of a new era in the geological work of Great 

 Britain and her colonies, and through them would prove a 

 great benefit to the scientific progress of the world. The 

 society proposed to begin its new year with an excursion 



