best remedies for them cannot fail to be of immense benefit to the whole community.

At the Central Experimental Farm the Dominion Entomologist and Botanist, Dr. James Fletcher, continues his valuable work, but he is severely hampered by the want of an adequate staff and proper appliances for experimental investigations. Last year Mr. Arthur Gibson, President of the Toronto branch of the Entomological Society, was appointed as an assistant and has already proved himself a most useful coadjutor, but what can three men do in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the great lakes to the Arctic Ocean? The Geological Survey has for years been provided with a staff ten times greater and has accomplished an enormous amount of most valuable work; it does not seem unreasonable that entomologists should cry out for a similar body of able men, when the same amount of territory has to be covered and when the objects of research involve the annual loss to the country of millions of dollars of money.

The appointment of Mr. William Lochhead to the professorship of the biological department of the Ontario Agricultural College of Guelph, has proved to be an admirable one. He has infused new zeal and enthusiasm among his students and has performed much useful work for the public by the publication of timely bulletins and papers on noxious insects; he has also been employed as an expert superintendent of the fumigation of nursery stock with hydrocyanic acid gas, that has been already alluded to.

In the United States more attention has been paid to economic entomology than in any other part of the world and more progress has consequently been made. There are now at least fifty different experimental stations, one in almost every State in the Union, and in some more than one, in which trained entomologists are engaged in practical work, and in addition there is at Washington a splendidly organized division of entomology in connection with the Department of Agriculture. The director is the widely-known Dr. L. O. Howard, who has gathered round him a staff of thoroughly trained and able men, and is able at all times to send into distant fields where some insect outbreak is threatened a man fully competent to carry out all necessary investigations and to make on the spot the requisite observations. We, in this country, owe very much to the publications so profusely issued by the various State entomologists, and especially to those that emanate from the division at Washington, whose scientific as well as practical value is beyond all praise.

In the British Isles, strange to say, little if any official recognition has been given to the importance of observations of injurious insects. It has been left to a woman, Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, to investigate the

life histories and distribution of the insects that affect the crops and fruits and domestic animals throughout Great Britain. For twentythree years she has been publishing at her own expense annual "Reports of Observations of Injurious Insects," in which are recorded the results of her own investigations and a digest of information gathered by a large circle of correspondents in every part of the country. She has also published at intervals hand-books, manuals and text-books, treating of various departments of economic entomology. Though unaided and unsupported by the Government authorities she has carried on for nearly a quarter of a century the work of a State entomologist and experimental station. It is gratifying to know that well-deserved honours have been bestowed upon her by scientific societies in many parts of the world, and that last month there was conferred upon her by the University of Edinburgh, the honorary degree of LL.D.,-the first time in its history that it has awarded such a distinction to a woman. It is earnestly to be hoped that Miss Ormerod may long be spared to continue her most useful and unselfish labours for the benefit of the community at large.

In other parts of the British Empire entomological work of an economic character is being carried on; by Mr. Walter W. Froggatt, Government Entomologist in New South Wales, Australia, and Mr. Charles P. Lounsbury at Cape Town, South Africa; similar valuable. work is also being vigorously prosecuted in connection with the Indian Museum at Calcutta.

Before closing these remarks, I cannot refrain from alluding to the irreparable loss that this section in particular has sustained as well as the whole Royal Society, and the cause of science in general, in the lamented death of Sir J. William Dawson. Few scientific men in any country have attained to greater celebrity and a more world-wide reputation than he, and in the annals of Canada he towers far above any of those who have devoted themselves to scientific pursuits. His name will always be held in veneration in this country as that of one who did. a noble and enduring work in his day and generation. Whether we look at the nearly forty years he devoted to raising up McGill University from the position of a feeble college to the magnificent institution that we see it now, or at the immense number of books and papers that came from his pen in constant succession during the busy years of a long life, we must be filled with admiration for the ability, the perseverance and the industry of the man. Few have ever accomplished so much; few have left behind them such enduring monuments to their genius; few have written so much of abiding value, and so much that aims at the highest interests of humanity and is so absolutely free from anything that can injure or debase. He was one of those rare men who unite in

themselves the deepest sense of personal religion, unswerving devotion to the principles of Christianity, the fullest faith in the all-embracing loving Providence of God, the keenest insight into the mysteries of science so far as the human mind can at present reach, and the perfect confidence that all that may seem now to be at variance between revelation and science will surely be completely reconciled at last.

The annals of the Royal Society, of which he was the first President, will contain, no doubt, an ample biography of our departed friend, and others are already recording the voluminous lists of his publications. I need only bear my feeble testimony to the nobility of his character, the charm of his personality, the greatness of his intellectual powers, the unrivalled work that he did for his University, for education, for science, for religion, for Canada his native land.

II.-Sponges from the Coasts of Northeastern Canada and Greenland.

By LAWRENCE M. LAMBE, F.G.S., OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

(Read May 29, 1900.)

In a paper entitled "Sponges from the Atlantic Coast of Canada,” published in 1896, in the Transactions of this Society, the writer gave the results of a careful study of a number of recent marine sponges from the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, and the Bay of Fundy.

The present paper consists of identifications or descriptions of species found farther to the north, off the coast of Labrador, in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, and may be considered, in a measure, as supplementary to the first paper. The specimens are from the museum of University College, Dundee, Scotland, and have been received from. Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson, at whose request the examination of the collection in question was undertaken. The majority of the specimens are from Davis Strait, and were for the most part collected by Mr. A. M. Rodger, Professor Thompson's assistant, who accompanied Captain Phillips, of the SS. "Esquimaux," on a whaling voyage in 1892, and also visited East Greenland in 1894 with Captain Robertson, of the S.S." Active." References are also made to a few species from Hudson Bay and Strait obtained, of late years, by Doctor Robert Bell and Mr. A. P. Low, of the Geological Survey.

All the specimens in the collection are preserved in alcohol.

66

MONAXONIDA.

RENIERA MOLLIS, Lambe.

Reniera mollis, Lambe. 1893. Sponges from the Pacific coast of Canada, Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, vol. xi., p. 26, pl. ii., figs. 3, 3a. Lambe. 1896. Sponges from the Atlantic coast of Canada, Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, second series, vol. ii., p. 183. Lambe. 1900. Notes on Hudson Bay sponges, Ottawa Naturalist, vol. xiii., p. 277.

This species, described originally from specimens from Vancouver Island, has been found in the east off the Labrador coast and near the entrance to the Baie des Chaleurs.