FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET. 163 



others. These have gone and so little is left to mark their 

 work that I am sorry to say it is scarcely creditable to those 

 who have followed them. I have been examining these col- 

 lections myself for my own purposes of knowledge and I am 

 sorry to feel that your collections in that direction are 

 barely as good as they were forty years ago. You have a 

 geological survey ; you have had a geological survey before, 

 and I ought to say, perhaps, that my experience in the 

 geological survey of the State of New York, if it does not 

 give me the right to speak, gives me an opinion which I 

 cannot very well help expressing. We in New York began 

 a geological survey in 1886. The report of the Secretary 

 of State proposing an organization of that survey was made 

 in 1835. In 1834 the Albany Institute, in which at that 

 time were some prominent men of science, as science was 

 then known, passed a resolution of this kind, recommend- 

 ing that a law be passed which shall result '* in bringing 

 together under one roof all the natural productions of the 

 State of New York." Now, that was attempted to be 

 carried out ; our survey was carried on for a few years and 

 terminated with the appropriation and fitting up of the old 

 State Hall, or the building which had been occupied by the 

 State officers for fifty and more years, for a geological and 

 Natural History Museum. This building was appropriated 

 to us, and an attempt was made to bring in specimens of all 

 the materials which should express anything in relation to 

 the natural products of New York; all the plants, all the 

 animals, all the minerals, whether interesting only in a scien- 

 tific aspect, or interesting in their economic aspect. This 

 work has not yet been finished. It may be accomplished 

 some time in the future ; but what I would say is that by this 

 course we have preserved the tangible evidences of what was 

 accomplished during the four years of the geological survey. 

 You have had a geological survey in this State, but I under- 

 stand the materials have never been brought together in 

 any public building. In several other States the same thing 

 has happened. The materials collected by the surveys, so 



