SdS American Association. 



The American Association for the Advancement of Science. — ■ 

 The advent of the distinguished men who constitute the memuers 

 of this society, and the other illustrious foreigners who have been 

 invited to meet them in the city of Montreal in August next, will 

 be one of the most important and interesting events that has ever 

 occured in Canada. We well remember when, at a meeting of 

 the Council of the Natural History Society held during the winter 

 of 1856, the propriety of appointing a delegation to represent the 

 Society at the Albany meeting of the Association, was suggested 

 and proposed. And when its present President, Mr. Principal 

 Dawson, hinted that Montreal would do well to invite the savans 

 to make that city their next place of meeting, we recollect the 

 douht> that were expressed and the difficuUies that were thought 

 to lie in the way of such an offer being accepted. It was said 

 U)V examp'e, th it the American members wnuld never consent to 

 the Association assembling on this side of the line '45°, and it 

 was strongly uraeJ, certainly with more of truth than poetry in 

 the argument, that the Natural Histiny Society, a paralysed, 

 helpless and almost hopeless institution, struggling hard for 

 its very existence, to invite an Association so active and energetic, 

 so distinguished and so full of vitality, would not only be a shock to 

 modesty, but a pioceeding which if favorably receiveil, would 

 place the Society in the most awkward diflficulty of providing ways 

 and means in accordance with its obligations, to accommodate 

 and entertain the Association so invited. The dissentients were 

 hard to satisfy, but they were at length convinced. The quiet 

 but telling and practical arguments of the President brought 

 them over. There was no knowing what might be the results 

 of such a meeting, what its good effects alike to the aged professor 

 and the very tyro in science. To bring here so many of the 

 learned in this continent to meet together in social communion, 

 for the interchange of great thoughts, would re-animate the dry 

 bones of our society and make it again hve. The ex itement 

 would nol pass at once away ; the influences would not be trans- 

 ient, but abiding ; they would be with us long ; we trust they 

 will never leave us ; and that (to use the woids of an eminent 

 philosopher speaking of the great sister Society, the British 

 Association,) whether the mathematician's study, or the astro- 

 nomer's observatory, or the chemist's laboratory, or some rich 

 distant meadow unexplored as yet by botanist, or some untrodden 

 ?nountain top, or any of the other haunts and homes and oracular 



