BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 218 



arrangement is made with the university authorities. With respect to a 

 herbarium, or collection of dried plants, this is justly regarded by every 

 Botanical Society as absolutely necessary to enable members to refer 

 specimens correctly to tbeir species. It will therefore be satisfactory to 

 know that arrangements are now in progress, whereby the herbarium, 

 presently attached to the Natural History Chair of Queen's College, will be 

 re-arranged in a convenient room, so as to become available for this purpose. 

 The herbarium embraces a fair representation of the floras of Europe, 

 Asia, Africa, and Australia, and is especially rich in American species ; it 

 has been named with great care, under favourable circumstances, many of 

 the specimens, in difficult and obscure families, having passed through the 

 hands of such botanists as Balfour, Greville, Gray, Babington, Heldreich, 

 Hooker, Lindley, Bruch, and Schimper, Syme, Wilson, Berkeley, Moore, 

 Mitten, Tuckermann, Carrington, Watson, Lowe, Lindsay, Harvey, Leigh- 

 ton, and other authorities in nomenclature. In addition to such means as 

 the above, there is now an abundant supply of excellent microscopes in 

 Queen's College, with all needful apparatus for the prosecution of minute 

 researches and microscopical analysis. It will be observed that we propose 

 to occupy a new field of research, to cut a new sod that has hitberto been 

 walked over by Canadians in comparative neglect. And, as before culti- 

 vation can take place, a clearance must be made, so I have endeavoured to 

 answer some of the objections that might be started to the formation of 

 such a society, and to point out the nature of the ground which it proposes 

 to occupy. While leaving to other societies the discussion of the more 

 general questions of science, and to special societies their peculiar topics, ■ 

 we propose to employ the Botanical Society as an instrument for the 

 collection of facts and the working out of details, which are of immediate 

 interest to the botanist alone, but of the greatest importance in leading to 

 correct results in general science. Scientific societies on a broader basis 

 have too often degenerated into popular institutions, calculated rather for 

 the amusement of the many, than for the encouragement and aid of the 

 few who are engaged in the prosecution of the original discovery. We 

 shall be guarded against such a result, in a great measure, by the special 

 object of our institution, but it will be needful, also, while we attempt to 

 spread a taste for botany, and to diffuse correct information as to its objects, 

 its discoveries, and its useful applications, that we should seek rather to 

 bring our members and the public into scientific modes of thought and 

 expression, than to allow our society to yield up its scientific character to 

 suit the popular taste. There is much reason to believe that the want of 

 an organisation of this kind, whose duty it is to collect and record facts 

 and discoveries, has been the means of losing to science materials of great 

 value. There have been casual residents in Canada, at different times, who 

 have made collections of greater or less extent, and who have, in some 

 cases, carried out special investigations in botany, without leaving any 

 printed record of their labours. Some of these may still be rescued from 

 oblivion ; but there are also other observations and discoveries made by 



