pkksident’s address. 
483 . 
APPENDIX. 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
By Hon. J. V. Ellis, D. C. L. 
With considerable feeling of anxiety I have undertaken to prepare 
what our programme describes as the annual address of the president- 
If custom had made it imperative that I should review the incidents 
of our operations during the year, describe our meetings and criticize 
our proceedings in a judicial and friendly spirit, I would have con- 
sidered myself fortunate ; but on looking over the addresses delivered 
by gentlemen whom it is my good fortune to succeed here, I got no 
suggestion as to the form which the address of a mere layman might 
take. It has been the practice of almost all of the preceding presi- 
dents to consider some matter of interest along their own special lines 
of study and of knowledge, and from their fields of information and 
observation both interest and enlighten us. Unfortunately, I cannot 
take any excursion into the field of natural history in which I would 
care to be your guide, and you will see from this the difficulties of my 
position. Yet as I have turned over the numbers of our Bulletins for 
several years, I have had some reward. I have been able to appreciate 
more fully than ever before the amount of work which has been done 
by our more active members in their varied fields of labor, in their 
study of land animals, birds, fishes, insects, plants ; in their close 
enquiry into our past and present geological conditions ; and in the 
facts which they have acquired respecting the habits and customs and 
general life of the original occupants of this land, by means of which 
they have increased our interest in all forms of life in our province,, 
and widened and enlarged the bounds of knowledge in many useful 
and attractive directions. 
As near as may be, this meeting is our fortieth anniversary. The 
first steps in the formation of the Natural History Society of New 
Brunswick were taken at a meeting held in the Mechanics’ Institute- 
