NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 217 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen — I could have wished that the duty of preparing 

 the annual address of the President had, on the present occasion, 

 fallen on some other person, as I fear that the pressure of various 

 official duties has scarcely left me time to do justice either to 

 myself, or to the work of the Society — still less to enter on that 

 wider survey of the progress of Natural Science to which we 

 are invited on an occasion of this kind. 



I find that, in the past winter, twenty-six original papers have 

 been read at the meetings of the Society, in addition to a number 

 of articles and reviews contributed by our members, and published 

 in the Naturalist, without being formally read here. I shall not 

 give a list of these papers, but shall endeavour to group them 

 according to the subjects to which they relate, and to give in this 

 way a general sketch, first of the amount of original scientific 

 research represented by these papers ; and secondly, of their bear- 

 ing on the arts of life, and on the material improvement of this 

 country. 



To begin with Geology, which in our day sits justly enthroned 

 as queen of all the natural history sciences^ and with Canadian 

 Geology which most nearly concerns us, we have had several 

 elaborate papers on those ancient, disturbed, disputed, and until 

 lately problematical rocks on which the oldest capital of Canada 

 stands, and which are consequently known to our survey as the 

 " Quebec group." To the common eye, the ancient citadel of 

 Quebec has been standing impregnable and secure, but in the 

 minds of geologists it has been floating like a mirage, now here 

 and now there, until many men have been at a loss in what terms 

 to express their idea of its geological place. The officers of our 

 survey have addressed themselves with much zeal and success to 

 this formation, and deserve great credit, first for frankly giving up 

 incorrect views previously maintained ; and secondly, for establish- 

 ing the true geological position of these difficult rocks on a sure 

 basis. Mr. Billings has in the past year furnished us with an in- 

 teresting view of the parallelism of these beds with the Llandeilo 

 of England. Sir Wm, E. Logan has introduced to us a new and 

 useful laborer on these fossils, Mr. Devine, of Quebec, and will him- 

 self publish in next number of our proceedings an elaborate sur- 

 vey of the stratigraphical arrangements of the beds at Point 

 Levi. In the geology and mineralogy of the metalliferous deposits 

 of this group, as they exist at the celebrated copper mine of Acton' 



