The Folk-Lore Society. 259 
by the Ladies’ Committee of the Branch, who so far have 
had satisfactory success. 
The Secretary, Mr. Reade, gave the substance of corres- 
pondence that he had had, since last meeting, with the 
Societies of New Orleans, Boston and Chicago, with which 
he had, at their request, promised to exchange reports of 
proceedings. The chairman than called upon Mr. Reade 
to give his paper on “ Opportunities for the study of Folk- 
Lore in Canada.” The essayist introduced the subject with 
a brief sketch of the history of Foli-Lore organization and 
study in Great Britain, the continent of Europe, especially 
France, the United States and Canada, and mentioning a 
number of periodicals that were entirely devoted to this 
branch of research. The Montreal Branch of the American 
Folk-Lore Socicty was the result of a movement begun by 
Prof. Penhallow and a few others, last February, the formal 
inauguration of the branch taking place in April, Mr. W. W. 
Newell, Secretary of the general Society, coming to 
Montreal for the purpose. Mr. Reade, having shown the 
relations of Folk-Lore to ethnology and mythology, char- 
acterized it as the stored-up knowledge of the folk or 
people, consisting largely of survivals of habits of thought 
or social and ceremonial customs of a more or less remote 
past. It included the whole vast background of popular 
thought, feeling and usage, out of which, and in contrast to 
which had been developed all the individual products of 
human activity that go to the making of history. The 
essayist then gave a succinct statement of the racial con- 
stituents of Canada, pointing out that every one of the 
various groups that composed our complex nationality 
had its own myths, tales, traditions, superstitious beliefs, 
ballads, dialects, etc., so that no matter where one lived 
between the Atlantic and the Pacific, in town or country, 
among French or British or German or Aborigines, des- 
cendants of U. E. Loyalists or people of old country stock, 
he was at no loss for interesting and valuable data. From 
Ferland’s history and other sources, including the censuses, 
from those of the 17th century to the last, Mr. Reade 
