NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 223 



sometimes enabled more readily to bring under the public notice 

 important facts or discoveries. The prosperity of this society is an 

 important stimulus to the study of natural science in the univer- 

 sity; and, on the other hand, the graduates who are constantly 

 going forth with a knowledge of the elements of natural science, 

 and some degree of taste for its cultivation, must materially 

 strengthen the society. 



The Council will report to the Society a regulation for the dis- 

 posal annually of a silver or bronze medal to some gentleman dis- 

 tinguished for important services to science, and especially to 

 science in Canada. I have further very much pleasure in stating 

 that it is proposed that the first silver medal granted under this 

 regulation shall be bestowed on Daniel Wilson, LL.D., of Univer- 

 sity College, Toronto. Dr. Wilson came to Canada with a high 

 reputation, earned in the study of British archaeology ; and in 

 this country he has pursued with much energy and success re- 

 searches in the ethnology and antiquities of America, the results 

 of which have appeared in many papers, published here and 

 abroad, and more recently in his valuable work " Pre-historic 

 Man." It is one of the most pleasant features connected with the 

 institution of these medals, that they will thus enable us to testify 

 our appreciation of the services of labourers in science not of our 

 own body, nor resident here, but who are nevertheless fellow- 

 workers with us in the objects which we have in view. 



I have reached the limits to which an address of this kind 

 should be restricted, without exhausting the topics suggested by 

 our annual meeting, and perhaps without having noticed some 

 important parts of our work ; but I must now conclude, with the 

 expression of the hope that the coming year may be still more 

 prosperous than the last, and more fruitful of great results. 



Report of the Council. 



The Council of the Natural History Society of Montreal, on the 

 occasion of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Society, find it their 

 duty to submit to the members generally a review of the pro- 

 ceedings and condition of the Society during the past year. And 

 if their predecessors have had cause on former occasions to con- 

 gratulate themselves on the steady progress of the Society, your 

 Council have now the pleasure of announcing that no other year 

 has excelled, or perhaps equalled, the one just closing in its his- 

 tory, either for the amount of scientific work done, or for the sue- 



