29 



$190,000, and the museum is arising in grand proportions, and 

 the fame of it is filling the whole earth. To-day we come before 

 the citizens of Philadelphia not with empty hands. With a library, 

 with a collection that it would take half a million of dollars to 

 gather up ; with funds sufficient for future support, this institu- 

 tion only asks a habitation ^a house in which it may display its 

 riches. 



Trustees of the Building Fund of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, we labor, it is true, under that strange curse which seems 

 rooted in the very groundwork of human nature. We are no 

 citizens of a foreign land. We are but prophets without honor in 

 our own country. And yet I say, go forward. 



Only with faith and vigor let us work, and it must be that suc- 

 cess will crown our enterprise ; that ere long we shall raise our 

 jubilant voices under roofed arch tree, in spacious halls and 

 lighted galleries voices jubilant for labor past, for good works 

 done, for hopes extinguished in fruition. 



Dr. Ruschenberger then laid the corner-stone, depositing in it 

 copies of the daily papers of the city, papers relating to the his- 

 tory of the Academy, the by-laws of the Academy, and the num- 

 ber of the Proceedings of the Academ}- of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia last published. 



Rev. Dr. Boardman delivered a prayer, after which the assem- 

 blage dispersed. 



