Ixxxii Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



raost interesting experiences of my life in Canada. You know- 

 there are some little incidents in life which afterwards turn 

 out to be very vital. Their effect proves to be peculiarly 

 searching and important. I think I will relate the incident 

 which made so pt"ofound an impression upon me. One night 

 in June when a friend and I were camping on the shore of a 

 lonely lake in Canada, we heard some three miles away, from 

 a little island, the booming of an Indian drum. I said to my 

 friend: " Let us see what it is." So we put the canoe into 

 the water and went across the bay, in the white moonlight, 

 to the spot where the camp of the Indians was established. We 

 found some fifteen men of the tribe sitting around a pine tree. 

 One of them was beating the drum. The others remained in 

 silence. There were no women in sight. I looked into one 

 of the tepees and within were the women of the tribe, one 

 of whom bad in her arms a little child, emaciated and dying. 

 I think its spirit was just leaving the body. They had a 

 string running from the tepee to the top of the pine tree and 

 every twelve inches or so along its course was knotted in a 

 tuft of feathers. It was very plain that they were doing their 

 best to give the soul of the child a favorable passage to the 

 happy hunting grounds, and as the spirit climbed the ladder 

 prepared by love the men were doing their part to keep the 

 forces of evil from seizing it as it made the journej^ 



In some way it came to me with great strength that we 

 are all concerned in the same deep problems of life, and of 

 late years I have been much more impressed than during my 

 earlier manhood with the unity of purpose between the most 

 scientific and the most superstitious. In considering the 

 place of modern science, I am inclined to take a sympathetic 

 view of the unscientific. 



Sir William Dyer wrote to me a few years ago a sentence 

 which seemed to me very pregnant with thought and truth. 

 He said: '• Science must not be apart from life; it must be a 

 part of life." I think the academies of science throughout 

 the country are fulfilling their destinies when they make 

 themselves a part of our national life. I was greatly inter- 

 ested in what the toastmaster said a moment ago when he 



