530 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



of the great influeuce he exerted duriug many years as a lecturer, a 

 writer, and an investigator. 



After all has been said, however, as to talent innate, power inherited, 

 or wisdom acquired, it must still be remembered of our lamented 

 President that he ranked higher than most men, because of the indis- 

 putable fact, that occasionally — at not infrequent times and seasons — 

 his mind was illumined by divine sparks and flashes of genius. 



ADDRESS OF CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT. 



Last spring an inquirer into the Department of Chemistry and 

 Mineralogy in Harvard University would have found a building called 

 Boylston Hall, one hundred and twenty feet by seventy, and three 

 stories in height, completely occupied with the laboratories, store- 

 rooms, and lecture-rooms for Chemistry, and a large section of the 

 University Museum devoted to mineralogical collections and labor- 

 atories. Turning to the College Catalogue he would have found a 

 series of elective courses in Chemistry, beginning with General Chem- 

 istry and Elementary Mineralogy, and rising through Qualitative 

 Analysis, Quantitative Analysis, Organic Chemistry, Crystallography 

 and the Physics of Crystals, Chemical Physics, and the Philosophy 

 of Chemistry, to original investigation in various branches of both 

 Inorganic and Organic Chemistry. Last year there were three hun- 

 dred and fifteen choices of these courses made by graduate and under- 

 graduate students ; so that this number of places had to be provided 

 in the laboratories of the department. The inquirer would also have 

 seen large illustrative collections of apparatus, chemicals, and min- 

 erals, — and particularly the mineral collection would have struck him 

 as extensive, well selected, and valuable. He would have found as 

 teachers in the department three full professors, three instructors, and 

 eight assistants. This elaborate and well equipped department of 

 instruction has grown up in the course of forty-four years under the 

 direction. of one man, Josiah Parsons Cooke. I shall endeavor to 

 show in some detail the strenuous, persevering, and well-directed 

 labor by which Professor Cooke developed this admirable instrument 

 of instruction and research. I might simply say in eleven words, — 

 Professor Cooke created the Chemical and Mineralogical Department 

 of Harvard University; but I should like to put before you some 

 faint picture of the intelligence, energy, persistence, and enthusiasm 

 which went into the accomplishment of that task. Mr. Cooke took 

 the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1848, but when he was an under- 



