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burial. Here is a resurrection exhibiting the inhabitants of our planet 

 as it circulated around the sun millions of years ago, and presented 

 them every twenty-four hours to the warm rays of his light. We seem 

 to be translated to another world, but it is only a translation to the 

 former eras of this world. No wonder that Dr. Wilson said, " The sci- 

 ence above all others in which I am most interested, is geology.'' 

 When we are looking at the remains of these denizens of our planet 

 which enjoyed the blessings of life through the long procession of mill- 

 ions of years, it is then and then only that we can begin to understand 

 what is meant by the words Creation and Creator ! Nor can we under- 

 stand these dead bones until we understand the living. It is only by 

 the study of living beings that we can study and comprehend the dead. 

 Therefore to appreciate these fossil remains, and comprehend the monu- 

 ments which God has erected in different periods of the past for our 

 instruction, we must have a museum of living things. We must com- 

 pare them all together; we must study the grand and comprehensive 

 system of organic life ; for all living things, whether of the present or 

 of the past, are connected in intimate relationships. Nothing stands 

 alone. And living beings which now seem to stand alone, we see to 

 be connected with the entire family by the discovery of their dead 

 near relations in the rocks, which form connecting links to complete 

 the chain. Not only arc we unable to form any just ideas of the words 

 Creation and Creator without the fossil I'emains of the past, but we are 

 equally unable to form an idea of the creation of living beings without 

 a Museum. It is only when we stand amid Wilson's collection of 

 birds that we can have an idea of creative power and creative wisdom 

 and creative goodness in that single department of creation. And so 

 of the fishes, the reptiles, the constaceans, the plants, the minerals and 

 every other department. Here in this Museum of 50,00U insects, the 

 rich treasure of the Entomological Society, can we only begin to un- 

 derstand the doings of the Eternal One in the work of creating these 

 diminutive creatures. Let no one wonder that Dr. Wilson spent so 

 much money and so much of his life in the establishment of the Aca- 

 demy of the Natural Sciences, and in founding this Entomological 

 Society. The real wonder is that so few men of wealth do the same. 

 How can life, or how can wealth have nobler objects ? 



Dr. Wilson's labors and pecuniary sacrifices in founding the Entomo- 

 logical Society of Philadelphia, began with its very beginning. On 

 February 14th, 1859, Messrs. James Ridings, George Newman, and 

 Ezra T. Cresson, at the house of the latter gentleman, then in Erie 



