BICENTENARY OF LINNjEUS 41 



hundred years ago; and this amelioration of our condition, and the more 

 general diffusion of knowledge, have been accompanied by a vast improve- 

 ment in morality. 



The ceremonies of to-day are worthy of the great naturalist whose birth 

 they commemorate. Societies and institutions all over the world join with 

 us in honoring him, and are represented here by delegates, or have trans- 

 mitted documents expressing their appreciation of his life and labors. The 

 public natural science institutions of New York have come to take leading 

 parts in the subjects they teach and illustrate. Public and private philan- 

 thropy have developed them with a rapidity almost phenomenal, for they 

 are all yet in their infancy and on a scale commensurate with the dignity of 

 the metropolis of America. The cordial co-operation of a municipality with 

 public-spirited citizens to build and maintain such institutions for the 

 welfare of the people and of science, finds here in New York its maximum 

 evolution, which has as yet, however, by no means reached its complete 

 development or its maximum usefulness. What will be said of their posi- 

 tion and importance when after fifty years the New York Historical Society 

 opens the tablet which we now place upon this bridge ? And what discov- 

 eries will science have made for the benefit of the human race during this 

 next fifty years ? 



The selection of this bridge, recently constructed by the Park Depart- 

 ment, as a permanent memorial of Linnseus, is most appropriate. It is 

 situated just outside the New York Zoological Park, with the New York 

 Botanical Garden a short distance to the north, being thus between the two 

 institutions which teach the subjects on which the fame of Linnseus chiefly 

 rests. The suggestion that it be known hereafter as the Linnaean Bridge 

 came from the Director of the American Museum of Natural History. 



On behalf of the New York Academy of Sciences I now unveil this 

 tablet, and present it to the city of New York, there having been placed 

 in it copies of to-day's program and other documents befitting the occa- 

 sion. 



After Wennerberg's song, rendered by the American Union of Swedish 

 Singers, "Hear us, Svea," Hon. Joseph I. Berry, Commissioner of Parks of 

 the Borough of the Bronx, in a few fitting words accepted the tablet on 

 behalf of the city of New York, and then delivered the key of the box 

 within the tablet to the New York Historical Society, for preservation till 

 Mav 23, 1957. These ceremonies were followed by the singing, by the 

 chorus, of Lindblad's "Battle Hymn," and then the audience listened to 

 the following two addresses. 



