xxxviii PROCEEDINGS OF THE CENTENARY MEETING. 



wont to tease me afterwards because I used to express fear that Dr. Livingstone 

 would discover everything in Africa before I could have a chance. The day after 

 visiting Lippincott's bookstore I visited the Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 lodged in that tall narrow building, which has been referred to this evening as 

 having stood where later stood the Hotel Lafayette. There I feasted my eyes 

 upon Dr. Kane's polar bear. For years the memory of that wonderful sight has 

 lived with me, and whenever thinking of the arctic regions, Dr. Kane's polar 

 bear, by the laws of natural association, has come back in memory, glorified, as 

 are all the visions of childhood. Yesterday, after more than half a century, 

 I saw Dr. Kane's polar bear again. Horrible! How the now time-worn relic 

 has shattered the memories of childhood! Taxidermy has made great advances 

 during the past half of a century. We can do better in the way of stuffing polar 

 bears to-day. We had three polar bears sent in cold storage to us from within 

 the Arctic Circle only a short time ago, and prepared them in Pittsburgh. Had 

 anybody told me more than fifty years ago, as I stood looking at Dr. Kane's 

 bear, that I should myself have three bears of the same species shipped to me 

 from Siberia to Pittsburgh, and that I should have them skinned there and 

 mounted for a museum, I should have declared the idea supremely ridiculous. 

 But the thing has actually happened. 



To be a member of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia seemed 

 to me in my youth the highest honor which could come to mortal man; and later, 

 when good old Doctor Ruschenberger, Mr. John Jordan, the President of the 

 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Nolan proposed me for membership, 

 I was one of the happiest young men in America. 



The memories which cluster around this institution are precious to me. 

 I will not speak of those who are living. I knew Durand and Fiot, and many 

 other botanists, who in my youth were connecting links with the early days of 

 this institution. When Mr. Stone entertained us this afternoon with his most 

 interesting account of the pine-barrens of New Jersey, there came back to me a 

 flood of recollections of certain golden days which I passed in company with 

 Durand, Fiot, my own father (who was a botanist), and my mother's cousin, 

 Francis Wolle, on the occasion of an excursion to New Jersey to study and 

 collect plants. I am glad to recognize here to-night the son-in-law of Francis 

 Wolle, Professor Doolittle, the honored professor of astronomy in the University 

 of Pennsylvania. These halcyon days, when all the world was young, and my 

 friends were the wisest of all men, when the flowers we gathered were the 

 brightest, and the bird-songs we heard were the sweetest, will never come 

 again. 



It has been my lot for a number of years to preside over the destinies of the 

 great museum established by the generosity of one of the most noted sons (by 

 adoption) of Pennsylvania at the headwaters of the Ohio. Supported by the 

 generous gifts and sympathetic counsels of Andrew Carnegie we have undertaken 

 to do in the western part of this great Commonwealth work allied to that which 



