PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA 295 



months to the study of the American people and the institutions of 

 this country. 



Finally, the great scientist, he whom people call the scientific 

 discoverer of America, returned to his country, carrying with him a 

 vast store of intellectual and material treasures of science. So abun- 

 dant were the results reaped from his expeditions that he needed the 

 cooperation of the best scholars of his time to compile that great mass 

 of material, and to place it into proper shape and form. 



Throughout his long and industrious life, Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt has ever retained his love and devotion for the country where 

 his great field of labor lay, and for its people to whom he always 

 felt so closely connected by his love for freedom in thoughts and for 

 liberty. It is a well-known fact that in his later days of all foreign 

 people who ever knocked at his door no one was more heartily wel- 

 comed than the American citizen. 



The benefits of his investigations in America returned to that 

 country in the course of time. No wonder that her people recognize 

 him as their benefactor. Another great man, whose monument will 

 be unveiled to-day, and most deservedly placed beside the one of Alex- 

 ander von Humboldt, Louis Agassiz, says of him : " To what degree 

 we Americans are indebted to von Humboldt, no one knows who is 

 not familiar with the history of learning and education in this country. 

 All the fundamental facts of popular education in physical science 

 beyond the merest elementary instruction, we owe to him," and at 

 another place : " Let us rejoice together that Humboldt's name will 

 permanently be connected with education and learning in this country, 

 for the prospects and institutions of which he felt so deep and so affec- 

 tionate a sympathy." 



Of all the tributes that have been paid to Alexander von Humboldt 

 the latest and most fitting has now found its expression in this build- 

 ing. For here, in this magnificent Museum of Natural History, the 

 ideal aim of all his theories is realized most perfectly : to cultivate 

 the love of nature, and thus to ennoble man and beautify his life. 



Gentlemen, permit me to thank you for the honor you have clone 

 me to-day, and to express the hope that this splendid building may 

 become a shrine of pilgrimage for scientists and students also of the 

 Old World, helping to bind the nations closer together. 



