284 Naturalist at Large 



the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American 

 Antiquarian Society, the Philosophical Society in Phila- 

 delphia, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 

 the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, and, to 

 cap all, a Harvard honorary degree. All these have been 

 vouchsafed unto me and many other honors besides, not 

 the least an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth and one 

 from Havana described elsewhere. I have many warm 

 friends in Hanover. I am not going to write a catalogue 

 of the honors, or mention those which came from Europe. 

 They all serve a very great purpose for they mean that 

 you can't quit trying to do your best without letting down 

 a lot of people. Moreover, they keep one humble-minded, 

 which is good for the soul. I wound up feeling that the 

 race was run and I might rest on my oars. 



One trembles to think of the heinous nature of the orig- 

 inal sin which gave rise to the widespread penance known as 

 an annual report. Along with thousands of other categories 

 of sinners, the preparation of an annual report is a periodical 

 duty for museum directors. I have tried from time to time 

 to make mine a little bit more than the literary dust which 

 is almost inevitable. Sometimes I have succeeded to a sur- 

 prising extent, so that my friends have occasionally written 

 and said that they read the report of such and such a year 

 with somewhat less loathing than usual. For the writing 

 of the annual report is by no means all of the horror in- 

 volved; a considerable nuitiber of people have to read it, if, 

 perchance, only because they have to make a digest of it 

 to include in their own annual tragedy. 



This year, in the midst of a war-torn world, I have been 



