﻿Outline of the President's Retiring Address. 311 



for original research. It was a rallying centre for all 

 persons in the community that were students of nature^ 

 and if members would lay themselves out to put the 

 Society in possession, by written communications, of such 

 observations as they had made on the departments of 

 Natural History in which they were severally interested, 

 it would at once be a stimulus to themselves to prosecute 

 more eagerly their special line of study, and a great help 

 to make the ordinary meetings of the Society attractive 

 and useful. He could himself testify how the obligations 

 under which he had lain to the Society had engaged him 

 to lose no opportunity of providing matter in the depart- 

 ment in which he worked as an amateur which might be 

 serviceable to the Society. He knew that many more of 

 the members who, like himself, were amateurs, and made 

 the prosecution of some branch of science a holiday 

 pastime, could produce papers that would be of value 

 in widening the knowledge of science among the citizens ; 

 and he felt that the Natural History Society would 

 not only strengthen itself, but would help to embellish 

 the lives and adorn the homes of the mercantile and 

 professional classes of Montreal, if it became the means of 

 inducing many more of them to take up the study of 

 some branch of Natural History. 



2. Great improvements had been made in the Society's 

 Museum. It was through the agency of the Museum — 

 by the training which it gave, familiarizing those who 

 frequented it with the acquisitions of Natural Science — 

 that they expected to accomplish much of their work as a 

 society, which aimed at encouraging the study of nature. 

 They had been receiving from time to time additions to it 

 in the way of donations from friends, and occasionally by 

 exchanges, but in some departments it was far from 

 being as complete as they could desire, if it was to 

 exercise the educational influence they wished. It was, 

 therefore, desirable that there should be a fund available 



