sented the Academy's gold medals, with a few happy remarks for each. 

 I remember his saying to Professor Milliken, then of the University 

 of Chicago, as he handed him the medal: "I envy you, Sir." Many dis- 

 tinguished guests were there to help receive us and refreshments were 

 served in the state dining room. That year was the Academy's semicen- 

 tennial and there were appropriate festivities; among other things, the 

 members and their families and the foreign delegates were taken down 

 the Potomac on the President's yacht, Mayflower, to make a pious 

 pilgrimage to Mount Vernon. 



At the Commencement of 1913, Princeton University conferred an 

 honorary degree upon Count Bernsdorf, the German Ambassador at 

 Washington, and I had an amusing and enlightening encounter with 

 his Excellency. President Hibben brought the illustrious candidate into 

 the Faculty Room, where the academic procession was forming, and in- 

 troduced such professors as were near the head of the column. The 

 Ambassador was very genial and pleasant to every one, until he came 

 to me and then his Excellency froze and became so stiff and repellent, 

 as to be positively rude. For a moment, I was puzzled by the startling 

 change in his behaviour, but I knew that it could not be personal, for 

 he had never heard of me. Suddenly it occurred to me that he took me 

 for an Englishman, because of my scarlet Oxford gown. His lack of 

 savoir faire was astonishing, especially as his sudden rigidity was merely 

 a pose; he could not have detested the individual Englishman so vio- 

 lently. 



From my own particular point of view, the next memorable event 

 of the year was the publication of my History of Land Mammals in the 

 Western Hemisphere. Aside from technical, quarto monographs, this is 

 the most ambitious of my books and was sumptuously produced by the 

 publishers, who made a beautiful volume of it. They appropriated 

 liberally for the illustrations, so that I could engage Mr. Horsfall to 

 make the many restorations of extinct animals, which are the chief in- 

 terest and ornament of the work. The book was much less successful 

 than I had hoped; I received, it is true, many letters of approval and 

 congratulation from fellow naturaUsts. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, for in- 

 stance, wrote that he had long wished for just such a book, but had 

 not expected it to appear in his lifetime. The newspaper notices were 

 flattering and the New York Evening Post paid me the high compli- 

 ment of reviewing the book, in a long editorial, which declared that I 

 had opened a new era in palaeontology. All this was very well, but 

 the work has had only a succes d'estime and the sales have been small. 



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