Annual Presidential Address. 187 
public, ever stating their needs, ever enlarging their needs, 
ever holding out hands to catch the drops that heaven might 
send them, until at last importunity, the reward of just 
demands prevailed, and the golden shower poured down to 
feed the thirsty ground. In this busy competitive age, 
next in value to existence itself is that of giving evidence 
—ceaseless, untiring evidence, of your existence. 
No one standing to-day on the steps of the original 
McGill College remembering what it was 25 years ago and 
seeing what it is to-day can fail to realize the inestimable 
value of keeping the needs of an educational institution 
clearly and distinctly before the public. Admit as Montreal 
may gratefully and proudly do, the force and power that 
McGill has gathered to itself through its right to claim as 
its presiding genius such a brilliant world-known guide as 
Sir William Dawson, admit to the full the magnificent 
staff which in all the branches of the University group 
themselves around him; —all such admissions do not fully 
explain the phenomenal success of the institution for much 
of it must in fairness be explained by the fact that McGill 
has aimed high, and has ceaselessly and with dogged persist- 
ency kept its aims before the public. 
Now the Natural History Society is an educational 
Society or it is nothing, and it ought to be righteously 
within the admitted field of “ higher education,” otherwise 
it has largely failed in reaching the object of its existence. 
If one in this prosaic age might indulge in “ day dreams ”’ 
my dream as to the future of this Society would be some- 
thing like this. A building worthy of Montrealas the Great 
Educational Centre of Quebec, and the Provinces, suited to 
the educational spirit of the times in which we live, and 
sufficiently large to gather under its roof in generous affi- 
liation all the leading literary and scientific societies of our 
city which now are leading independent lives. A free 
library for study and reference, in connection with the 
three fold objects of our existenee—Natural History, General 
Seience and Literature,—ample room for private study— 
every inducement held out to the students of our Colleges 
