ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 105 



" an aggregate'* of cells with the direction of a positive animal 

 life — a reason for which I think is satisfactorily given in the 

 Book of Genesis, chap. 3, v, 22 to 24. 



The foregoing are a feiv short extracts from the president's 

 address, interspersed here and there with some passing observa- 

 tions ; for I have felt, in the relation, that I may not only be too 

 diffusive, but that I am trenching somewhat on the province of 

 our talented associate and microscopist, Dr. Sommers. I have 

 only further to hope that our Institute will soon possess micro- 

 scopic instruments of sufficient power to enable him to show us 

 all those microscopic experiments and microscopic life, the 

 wondeis of which have been for some time known to the 

 scientists of other countries. From these anticipated resources 

 we may, I think, reasonably expect, that in this to us new field 

 of investigation, discoveries will be made that will prove our 

 high estimation of this valuable branch of Natural Science, and 

 perhaps enable us, in an hitherto untried zone of research, to 

 contribute a little to what has been already realized. 



Yet, after all the wealth of scientific discovery of our day, and 

 our pride in it, which sometimes amounts to inflation, I think it 

 must be conceded by sober reason that human pi ogress, great as 

 it is, has reached no further than the threshold of the temple of 

 science, the golden pinnacles of which seem now and then to 

 greet our vision high above, the clouds of obscurity. The motto 

 of its votaries must still be " Excelsior ! " Still it is not as in the 

 past ages, that speculative science, assuming the general ignorance, 

 stands for truth, or is received without strict examination. The 

 world has had much to unlearn of what had been for long periods 

 received as indisputable. The earth, without further contro- 

 versy, rolls round the sun, and is no longer a flat surface girdled 

 by an unknown ocean. Even within a century revealed religion 

 has been placed, I think, upon a surer basis by scientific inter- 

 pretation. Geology, with yet much to unfold, so far shows us 

 that the world ([ say it with reverence) was not made in six 

 natural days, although the sequence of creation corresponds more 

 exactly with a reasonable and no doubt a more correct interpre- 

 tation of the Divine record; and crude deductions with respect 

 to the effects of the Noachian deluge, are fast giving way before 

 investigations which, without ignoring that great event, or any 

 of its phenomena, reasonably attribute much that was presup- 

 posed to belong to it, to other and remoter causes. These truths 

 are intimately connected with and lie at the foundation of many 

 of the grand discoveries of the age. |3ome of them are dogmas 



