186 Canadian Record of Science. 
We are a “Natural History Society,” and up to the 
limit of our opportunity I hold a successful one, but we 
were created just as much a Society for the Study of 
General Science, as a Society for the Study of General 
Literature; and as far as my knowledge goes both these 
latter aims can scarcely be claimed as forming part of our 
corporate active life and existence. 
And yet our city abounds with scattered societies many 
of them private, others semi-public and others public; 
which have started into existence to meet what their 
members considered positive, scientific and literary needs 
and that wholly apart from the Natural History Society 
incorporated for the very purpose of seeing those needs 
supplied. 
One could easily understand this if our city were the size 
of London or New York, but with a population such as 
ours it does seem a pity that scattered societies should posi- 
tively be doing the work that our act of incorporation has 
created us to do, and are doing it wholly apart from our 
society, and in some cases without the slightest knowledge 
that such work forms part of the work that our society was 
incorporated to perform. 
Of course such a fulfilment of original aims, demands an 
expenditure far beyond our present income, and an expend- 
iture that would not be just or business-like under the 
present conditions of our life. But there is no condition of . 
life in this busy world of progress that cannot be improved, 
and it does seem to me that the time has come when this 
honored society should emerge from the almost “ Classic 
Shades” of its existence, into that bustling life of educa- 
tional competition which working out its destiny in the 
public arena ‘on which ten thousand eyes are fixed” has 
already in connection with other institutions caught the 
attention, rivetted the thought, and won the noble gifts of 
noble hearted and generous men, who regard the educational 
improvement of a country as all important, and have proved 
their regard by acts of princely munificence. But then 
these institutions were always ‘in evidence” before the 
