35 



I propose now to pay him $50 more, and the balance when the case is fin- 

 ished and at the Hall of the Society. I propose also, (if he thinks it will be 

 better, to secure at once the lumber necessary for the four other cases,) to ad- 

 vance $50 on each for that purpose, say $200 altogether, and also to advance on 

 each case an additional $50, when it is so far completed as to require cork and 

 glass; the balance due on each case when finished, to be paid when it is de- 

 livered complete to the Societ}'. 



We can easily understand how individuals may have been acquainted 

 with Dr. Wilson, seeing him act and hearing him speak for years, 

 without recognizing him as a great man. Even now they may not feel 

 that a great character has just left us. When greatness comes in its 

 most simple and unpretending form, it may easily be overlooked. So 

 it was of old with " the man of Nazareth." A member once remarked 

 to us at a meeting of the Academy, as he was walking across the room, 

 '• The doctor is the very personification of modesty." He would not 

 surely have been great if greatness consisted in making a display, either 

 in speaking or in acting. It is a beautiful lesson taught us by an an- 

 cient seer, near three thousand years ago, that he did not recognize 

 God in the thunder, nor in the earthquake, nor in the whirlwind, but 

 in the still small voice. With the great mass of mankind it is just the 

 reverse. They have need to be arrested and made attentive, and taught 

 how the still small voice may tell more than the thunder. In human 

 character greatness of the very highest type consists in an enlightened 

 judgment and a good heart; not in the faculty or the disposition for 

 making personal demonstrations. The demonstration of a great niind 

 shows itself by good and great deeds performed silently and with the 

 least possible ostentation ; good and great deeds whose influence may 

 last through all time without any alloy of evil. Res non verba, things 

 not words, as we have already said, was his favorite motto. The supe- 

 riority of his judgment was seen in not allowing his benevolence to 

 run in the ordinary beaten tracks, but in making the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences what it now is. He was very far in advance of the 

 general intelligence of the times when, many years ago, he entertained 

 so high an appreciation of the Natural Sciences. And after the Aca- 

 demy had been well furnished and well established, he again showed 

 his judgment superior to that of members there by founding the V,n- 

 tomological Society. The ruling spirits of the Academy could not 

 see the propriety of having a new society whose object was purely 

 Natural History, like their own, and apparently interfering with their 

 work and opposing their interests. He saw clearly what they could 

 not see, that the Academy never had answered, and probably never 

 would answer, the purposes of entomology. Just as formerly, there 



