their manifestations in the most distant parts of the earth, but embraced as a whole it may be within periods too great to have yet been comprehended in the range of time over which the longest series of magnetic observations have extended. It may be that the full significance of the phenomena now being recorded in the Toronto Magnetic Observatory will only be understood when their normal progression completes a larger cycle, not of years but generations; and other centuries shall, by our aid, perceive the compass of great general laws. The relations already traced between magnetism, electricity, light, heat, and mechanical force, and all the singular glimpses of thermodynamics reducible to well-established laws by known mechanical principles, manifestly point to future disclosures of some comprehensive truth, as simple, yet perhaps even more wideembracing than Newton's law a grand law of the universe that shall indicate long concealed relations between that vital force which is controled by mental volition and animal instincts, and the mechanical forces which control inorganic matter, and bind suns, and planets, and systems into one.

Thus do those little-heeded labors of our magnetic observers unite us as fellow-workers with the noble phalanx of intellectual toilers, whose far-reaching thoughts and speculations wander through unillumined vistas of the coming centuries, and search for revelations of truths which the angels desire to look into; and the full significance of which, I doubt not, the spirits of just men made perfect rejoice to employ their renovated powers in mastering. But, while thus standing on

"This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future, two eternities,

man-unconsciously stimulated by his immortal destiny,-desires to look into the unseen truths of a great future; it is also with no less characteristic zeal that he indulges in a wise retrospection; and in this also we have our indefatigable Provincial phalanx of workers. The two Decades illustrative of Canadian palæontology, issued during the past year by the Geological Survey of Canada, minutely illustrate and describe evidences of life pertaining to formations dating within that primary palæozoic period in which the Geologist recognises the oldest traces of organic structure, at an epoch, the remoteness of which he dimly guesses at by hundreds of thousands of years. And of what use is it for us to learn of those long-perished

crinoids and foraminifera, intombed in rocky sepulchres, grander and more lasting than the pyramids and catacombs of the Pharaohs? In this, too, Canada is doing her appointed share in the world's search into the hidden truths of that book of nature, which is no less a divine revelation to us than the sacred volume of revealed moral truth: no less divine, though of inferior moment in the bearings of the truths it discloses, as revealing to us the Creator travelling in the greatness of his might through the silences of that infinite which lies behind us. In this, Canada claims to take her part among the world's thinkers. She will hew her lumber, raise her wheat, mine her copper, lead the tracks of her railways ever westward, conquering the savage wilderness, and make the wilds of our vast pine forests the happy settlements of a free, industrious, and progressive people; but she aspires to something more than to be the mere lumberer and wheat-grower of the world; and in so far as Canada does so, her material progress will not be the less, but greatly the more, for the intellectual vigor developed in thus claiming her place in that grand intellectual arena to which only the world's most gifted races find admission.

I might indeed dwell here, with justice, on the practical results of science; on the certainty that the mastery of the laws of nature increase the power of man; on the wondrous consequences that have followed from its least heeded beginnings; on the rubbed amber, ExTpov,-the electron of the Greeks-lifting straws:.or the convulsions of the dead frog in the kitchen of the famed Bolognese Professor, Galvani : from whence we trace all our magnetical observatories, our new determinations of longitudes, our electric telegraphs, and the world-embracing project of our Atlantic cable. Or, again, on Newton's Apple; Jansen, the Dutch Optician's toy glasses; Watt's tea-kettle; or-apter for our present purpose,-Franklin's old key, which served him, with a silk-thread, sealing-wax, and a sheet of paper, to discover the identity of lightning and electricity: these, or a thousand other germs of thought, insignificant, and barren as the sand-grains sown by the east wind, when presented to the dull common eye; but pregnant as the thousand-fold seed which the Master Sower let fall into good ground, when they drop like the dews of summer on the fostering intellect of ripened genius. But here at least, such a defence of the sciences is unneeded. In the Canadian Institute it may be presumed that we pursue science from the pure

delight which springs from the discovery of its secret truths; that we climb the steeps of knowledge, as the traveller ascends the mountain's unexplored cliffs, gladdened at every pause in his ascent with new grandeur and beauty in the widening horizon which opens on his delighted gaze.

But, while in thus leaving out of our present consideration the direct commercial and utilitarian results of Canadian science, our chief field of operation in Canada, and the immediate evidences of her scientific progress, are presented to us in the illustration of unknown gasteropods, crinoids, and foraminifera, discovered among the fossil forms of our older paleozoic rocks: we must not overlook the comprehensive generalizations to which the accumulation of such minute and seemingly isolated facts in ancient organic structure are leading.

With the original area of observation so immensely widened to the zoologist and naturalist by the comprehensive disclosures of palæology, all former conclusions are being subjected to revision and testing by such new evidence. The reality of the existence of very clearly discriminated specific forms, and the proofs of a continuous system of organization, development, displacement, and extinction, seem all more evident and indisputable. Yet the immediate result appears in the removal of many old land-marks of scientific faith, whereby we witness some of those conditions of ruin, which mark all transitional and revolutionary eras,-whether of thought or action. The old has been shaken, or thrown down, the new is still to build; and the casual and hasty observer is too apt to regard the indispensable clearing away of old and worn-out fabrics as the index only of ruin and desolation; while in reality it is the inevitable stage towards a higher replacement like the ragged log-piles, the girdled-trees, and charred stumps of the pioneers of civilization in our Canadian wilderness, which are the needful precursors of the clearing, the farm-house, and the happy village homes.

In this light, I conceive, we must look upon that comprehensive question which now challenges revision in the hearing of new wit nesses: What is Species? It is a question which forces us back to first principles, and equally affec's the sciences of Paleontology, Zoology, and Ethnology; while it has also been made to bear in no unimportant degree on the relations of Science and Taeology: involving as it does the questions:-In what forms has creative power been manifested in the succession of organic life? ani, Under what

conditions has man been introduced into the most diverse and widely separated provinces of the animal world? It is to the comprehensive bearings of the latter indeed, that the former owes its origin; for what is the use of entertaining the question, prematurely forced upon us: Are all men of one and the same species ? while authorities in science are still so much at variance as to what species really is; and writers who turn with incredulous contempt from the idea that all men are descended from Adam, can nevertheless look with complacency on their probable descent from apes! One revolutionary class of thinkers, having its representatives among the ablest men of science on this continent, incline to the belief that species is a mere logical invention of the systematiser, and that the older naturalists have converted convenient definitions and the necessary formulæ of classification, into assumed realities. On the other hand, the extreme phalanx of their opponents invent a series of catastrophes, by which each geological period is closed, -the finished act, as it were, of a grand cosmic tragedy,—and all existing life is swept away, to give place to the creation of new species for the succeeding epoch of a renovated earth. This mysterious question of the origin of species is accordingly trammelled in part by that most dangerous of all hindrances to free inquiry and unbiased scientific judgment: The foregone popular conclusions relative to the supposed terms in which alone it can be answered, consistently with the inspired history of creation. Hence, on the one hand, development theories and transmutation of species; and on the other the more consistent idea not only of permanency of species, but also, along with it, of the recognition of the same great general laws which now govern the natural world having been in operation throughout all the countless ages of organic being which geology reveals to us.

Such inquiries into first principles necessarily bring about a collision between the conservative, and the progressive ranks of thought; but in the conflict-whatever dust and heat arise, the inevitable destruction of some long cherished error is of itself a clear gain The course and tendency of thought may meanwhile be indicated to us by some of its most striking aspects:-e. g., by the startling propositions of Agassiz relative to supposed relations between the different types of man, and the geographical distribution and local circumscription of species in the world of inferior animal life. On the other hand, Professor Dana has produced his "Thoughts on

Species," illustrated by highly ingenious analogies, and not only suggesting clearer definitions, but also supplying some very comprehensive bases of thought. The problem, however, is not one of easy solution. After various oscillations in the phases of expressed opinion, Professor Baden Powell, has boldly taken up the enquiry in the whole comprehensive bearings of " The Philosophy of Creation," and in this work, among other profound questions, he gives special importance to that of the immutability or transmutation of species, as one of the most significant in relation to all the final deductions on which the disclosures of geology, and the scientific foundations of cosmo-theology, compel us to render our verdict anew.

Still more recently an eminent English Naturalist: Charles Darwin, has in his elaborate introductory treatise: "On the origin of species by means of natural selection," carried to undisguised conclusions, and with systematic details of evidence and results, some of those opinions which Professor Powell has only left to be surmised. According to Mr. Darwin, the essential differences of genera are only the product of the same powers of nature through a greatly protracted epoch, which within a less prolonged period had sufficed to produce species; and under our own limited observation are seen to give rise to permanent varieties in animals and plants. From observation of phenomena occurring within our own cognizance he has arrived at the conclusion that there is in reality no essential distinction between individual differences, varieties, and species. The well-marked variety is an incipient species; and by the operation of various simple physical causes, and comparatively slight organic changes, producing a tendency towards increase in one direction of variation, and arrestment, and ultimate extinction in another, that law of natural selection, as Darwin terms it, results, which leads to his "preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." He thus establishes, as he conceives, a principle in nature, akin to that which man consciously sets in operation, when he effects changes on domesticated animals and on plants, by altered conditions of life, and then perpetuates such as he selects by preference for his own use. The element of timeso limited in man's operations, -is for practical purposes unlimited in relation to the operation of natural causes on the development of variations in organic being in diverse directions; and as the great physical changes to which geology bears witness, supply all the means requisite for producing individual variations on a scale immensely ex