gives me special pleasure to receive this medal from the hands of my 

 friend Mr. Root, whom I first knew as Secretary of War, now as 

 Secretary of State; emphatically the right man, whatever the place." 



President Eliot made one of his characteristic, wet-blanket addresses, 

 pointing out the many reasons for not admiring Franklin. He almost 

 made me ashamed of my descent from the disreputable old party. The 

 reception and dinner, with which the three-day celebration wound up, 

 were especially brilliant. Senator Lodge, who came as President 

 Roosevelt's personal representative, made an excellent speech, though he 

 had to twist the British Lion's tail a little, to which George Darwin 

 replied in a very good-humoured way. M. Jusserand, who was a member 

 of the Philosophical Society, spoke with the grace and mastery which 

 one always finds in his historical addresses. 



A telegram from Osborn informed me of my election to the National 

 Academy of Sciences, which, needless to say, gave me profound gratifi- 

 cation. Marsh's ban had, at last, been lifted, nearly seven years after his 

 death. Our sessions were still going on when the dreadful news arrived 

 of the earthquake and fire at San Francisco, grieving and depressing the 

 whole company, though the loss of life turned out to be less than had 

 been feared. 



The International Zoological Congress met at Boston in the summer 

 of 1907 and was a memorable gathering of distinguished men. As I 

 have usually found to be the case, the principal value of the Congress 

 was in its social side, in the opportunity to see old friends again and to 

 make new acquaintances among men whose work has long been 

 familiar. Of the papers and discussions, I have but the vaguest recollec- 

 tion, with the exception of an astonishing paper by Professor Gustav 

 Steinmann, of Bonn, read before the Palaeontological Section. The 

 paper was an advance abstract of a small book on the theory of evolution 

 {die Abstammungslehre) which was published some months later in 

 Germany. Steinmann had had an excellent reputation as a geologist, 

 especially for the work which he had done in South America, but that 

 paper, and the book as well, were made up of the most startling absurdi- 

 ties that I ever heard. The audience listened in perfect silence to these 

 new doctrines and not a word was said in discussion of them. If I may 

 judge others by my own sensations, we were all stunned and helpless in 

 an atmosphere of bewilderment and unreality, which made it impossible 

 to offer the objections that came crowding into the mind. I felt very 

 much as I had, in my childhood, when I first read the bewildering 

 fallacies of Alice in Wonderland. 



