president’s address. 
55 
APPENDIX. 
Summary of President’s Address. 
In his annual address delivered January 21, the President 
made reference to the growth of the Society in membership, to 
the convenient premises which it now occupied, and which it 
had purchased so that it might have a permanent home. He 
referred to the work which had been done in arranging its 
museum and in cataloguing its library. Its out-door meetings 
in the summer of 1907 had been pleasant, as well as beneficial 
to students of nature. Some excellent work had been accom- 
plished by the more active members of the Society, but they 
would all be glad if the number of workers along original lines 
could be increased. 
The President then went on to speak of the influence of the 
imagination upon the scientific mind in studies of nature. He 
illustrated his treatment of the subject by references to the 
writings of Lieutenant Maury, U. S. N., upon the physical 
geography of the sea; but more especially by references to the 
theories of geologists who have maintained a belief in an ice 
age, in recurring glacial eras, and the like; and in this connec- 
tion he quoted largely from various writings of Sir Henry H. 
Howorth who has summed up in several of his publications the 
evidence which is held by the glacialists to maintain their views, 
and who, on the other hand, states the grounds upon which he 
dissents from the inferences and theories of the glacialists. In 
the views expressed on both sides the influence of the imagina- 
tion was apparent. 
