254 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 



life, without regard to anything; else, to the promotion of knowledge, I have 

 felt that yon were doing a good thing, not only for the City of San Franeisco> 

 not only for the State of California, but for the United States as a great Em- 

 pire, as a power among nations ; for you showed by your zeal, among the diffi- 

 culties which surrounded you, that you meant, even if you did not succeed to 

 the full extent that you desired, to keep up the spirit which leads forward in 

 intellectual growth. Now, I hold that it is your mission to show to the western 

 part of this continent, that without intellectual growth there is no greatness for 

 a State. It is that which you have to bring to the full understanding of the 

 whole community. You are surrounded with wealth as no State ever was. 

 You have men among you who are richer than kings of the Old World, and yet 

 I see you are still in close quarters. You have not rooms in which to display 

 your acquisitions ; you have not the means of making your pursuits inviting 

 to the community at large ; and with whom does it rest to foster these inter- 

 ests of intellectual growth? With those who have the means. Let them 

 take the example of the rich men of Massachusetts. I know what they can do. 

 I went single-handed to Cambridge, to teach Natural History, twenty-five years 

 ago. When I delivered my first lecture, there was not in the University a single 

 specimen to illustrate what I had to say. And yet a little band of students, 

 feeling an interest in what they could learn in the lecture-room, and others, 

 thought such a pursuit was worth encouraging, and by-and-by the idea arose 

 that a museum would be of use, and the means were gradually forthcoming, at 

 first sparingly, in small contributions, but gradually more liberally, in larger 

 sums, until at this moment, after fourteen years only, the museum at Cambridge 

 stands, in my estimation, without a parallel in the world. 



It may sound like an exaggeration, and yet I will explain how it is possible. 

 The institutions of science in the Old World have grown through centuries. 

 They have been founded upon the ideas which were developed by science in the 

 course of time. They were organized with the means then at the disposal of 

 the investigators of the time, and science has made such progress that now these 

 great institutions are in a measure superannuated, because they cannot be re- 

 juvenated. They are so organized that it is impossible in the halls of the 

 British Museum or in the halls of the Jardiu des Plantes, to introduce those 

 appliances which modern research requires. Our little museum was started 

 with the ideas of to-day, and has grown with them in consequence of that. 

 Such materials only were collected as have an immediate bearing upon the 

  questions of the time ; and as science'advanced, those materials were increased in 

 the direction in which progress was making. And there was a facility for that 

 in the very organization of the whole institution ; and that has been so felt by 

 our citizens that they have extended to me every facility which I could wish for. 

 I have had for the last five or six years all the means which I was capable of 

 expending profitably. ' And yet, you are richer than Boston — a great deal more 

 so. You have a great many more men who could contribute in that liberal 

 way to the organization of an institution which would benefit not only those 

 interested especially in natural science, but which would make observers. This 

 is what the world wants — not books to read, but men to learn what is not yet 



