uld
not be isolated nor removed from the stream of national life; his hope
was that it should minister in a practical and tangible way to the
community in which it was situated. On November 5th, 1855, he was
inaugurated as Principal. A few days later he established the first real
link between University and citizens, on the purely instructional side,
by the commencement of a course of thirty popular lectures in Zoology,
Natural Philosophy, Civil Engineering, Palaeography and the Chemistry of
Life. The fee for the course was L1. The course in Engineering was the
origin of the department of Applied Science, which later expanded into a
Faculty. Soon afterwards a course of lectures in Agriculture was given
by the Principal, who, while Superintendent of Education in Nova Scotia,
had given several lectures on that subject throughout the province. The
fee for this course was L1 5s.

A direct appeal for financial assistance was then made to the citizens
of Montreal. It met with an encouraging response, which greatly relieved
the situation and was what Dr. Dawson, forty years later, called "the
beginning of a stream of liberality which has floated our University
barque up to the present date." But other anxieties were soon to be
felt. Early in 1856 the building occupied by the High School and the
Faculty of Arts was destroyed by fire, together with the few books and
the scanty apparatus that had been collected or had been given by Dr.
Skakel many years before, as well as many of the Principal's natural
history specimens. Teaching was not interrupted, however, and during the
remainder of the session, the classes in Arts were held again, in part,
in the original College buildings, then undergoing repairs, and, in
part, in the Medical Faculty's building on Cote Street, in which rooms
were generously placed at the disposal of the Faculty of Arts. Because
of the occupation of part of the College buildings, and the expectation
of soon again putting them to permanent use, improvements were commenced
on the College grounds, by the planting of trees and the making of roads
and walks, the cost of which was borne largely by the Principal. In
1856, general courses in Applied Science were established in connection
with the Faculty of Arts, and degrees were first conferred in that
department in 1859. The courses in the Law School, which had been
formed into a separate Faculty in 1853, were extended to suit the
conditions and needs of the coun