xxvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE CENTENARY MEETING. 



THE BANQUET. 



The actual anniversary of the birthday of the Academy was celebrated 

 by a banquet in the evening, when one hundred and sixty delegates, members, 

 and guests, assembled in the New Hall, which was beautifully decorated for 

 the occasion. The tables were arranged in a long rectangle, the center of which 

 was filled by a collection of palms, ferns, and flowering plants. The guests 

 arranged themselves in friendly groups and the Chair was taken by the President, 

 Dr. Dixon. On his right were placed the Hon. Rudolph Blankenburg, Mayor 

 of Philadelphia; Hon. John Cadwalader, Vice-President of the Academy; Mons. 

 Jean de Pulligny, Director of the Commission of French Engineers to the United 

 States; Charles Custis Harrison, LL.D., late Provost of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania; William J. Holland, Sc.D., LL.D., Director of the Carnegie Museum, 

 Pittsburgh; Edward J. Nolan, M.D., Recording Secretary and Librarian of the 

 Academy; and Walter Horstmann. On the left were seated Edwin G. Conklin, 

 Ph.D., Vice-President of the Academy and Professor of Biology in Princeton 

 University; Henry Fairfield Osborn, LL.D., Sc.D., President of the American 

 Museum of Natural History; J. Percy Moore, Ph.D., Corresponding Secretary 

 of the Academy and Assistant Professor of Zoology in the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania; Theodore N. Gill, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Professor of Zoology in George 

 Washington University; Henry G. Bryant, LL.B., President of the Geographical 

 Society of Philadelphia; and Edwin S. Dixon. 



Dr. Conklin in his capacity as Toastmaster, remarked : 



Gentlemen: We have come to the last and crowning event in this Centenary 

 Celebration of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Anniversaries 

 mark something more than mere length of life tombstones do that; anniversaries 

 mark progress. They are milestones, rather than tombstones; and to-night we 

 pass one great, one major milestone in the history of this institution. 



It is not always easy to distinguish between milestones and tombstones. 

 You know the story of the old lady, who, visiting friends in Cambridge, found 

 a stone by the roadside inscribed " 1 M. from Boston." Reading it with emotion 

 "I'm from Boston" she remarked "how simple, how sufficient!" 



But we are not now on the subject of tombstones. We are passing one of 

 the milestones, as I have said one of the major milestones. 



The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia has many distinguishing 

 characteristics. One of them is the fact that it was not founded by Benjamin 

 Franklin; but I think it is more than probable that some good and ingenious, if 

 not ingenuous, phylogenist might be able to trace certain of its splendid charac- 

 teristics back to that great founder. At least, we may say that we are, in a 

 way, related to the American Philosophical Society, our elder sister, which was 

 the product of the fertile brain of the philosopher and statesman. 



The title of this institution has always impressed me as being a particularly 

 modest one: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. We have evi- 

 dence here to-night, and have had throughout this whole celebration, of the 

 fact that The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia is an Academy that 



