BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 215 



zeal and devotion tliat have marked so many of your members. The birds of Bryant, the 

 insects of Harris, the shells of Gould, the fossils from the Sivalik Hills, the contributions of 

 a thousand helpful hands from every quarter of the globe suggest something more than 

 their scientific value. For they are still alive with the generous love of science which 

 prompted their bestowal, and which, clinging to them still like the scent to the vase, 

 wreathes your walls, more beautifully than the chisel of the artist and in more enduring 

 material, with the names and the features of those of whom I have spoken. Yes, and of 

 Greene and Wyman and Jackson and Greenwood and Brewer and a hundred others. 



If fifty years have wrought all this from such a slender beginning, what shall not fifty 

 years more achieve ? Everything, indeed, for science ; everything for the increase of 

 human knowledge. But more than all else, speaking for that Commonwealth which means 

 not a function of government, but means the common weal of the people and of all the 

 people of Massachusetts, her humblest, her weakest, her most dependent, those who sadly 

 and heavily bear the burdens, who hew the wood and draw the water, I love to think that 

 your labors, much as they delight you, will still more bear fruit for them, and that you 

 are fulfilling the time when the student of science, exulting in the treasures that come to 

 his exploring, and touching at his fingers' ends the keys that turn every element of the 

 physical world into an agency of usefulness, not only finds his own cup full, but is the ben- 

 efactor of the whole human race, alleviating the weight of toil, shortening the hours of 

 the drayage of labor, enlarging the capacities and material of a brighter, happier, more 

 generous life for all alike, and letting every soul go freer and freer in its up-springing and 

 response to God. 



The President next introduced Dr. Samuel Eliot, Superintendent of the Boston Public 

 Schools. 



Address of Dr. Eliot. 



In opening his speech Dr. Eliot observed that he did not understand why he was called 

 upon to represent the city of Boston in the absence of Mayor Prince. The only title, 

 said he, which I can so much as unagine entitling me to speak in behalf of Boston, is that, 

 to some extent, I am, for the time being, a representative of the public education of the 

 city. Boston has no brighter jewel in her crown, Boston has had no higher function in 

 all the long years of its past, than that which has made her the teacher and the mother of 

 so many thousands of her children. Indeed, this education given in the public schools of 

 various grades and names, and the work of such a Society as this, interests me very 

 deeply. I think, as I stand here, of the scenes that I have looked upon in this and the 

 adjoining building, where the teachers of our public schools have gone at the invitation of 

 this Society, and, through individual genius and the contributions of the friends of this 

 Society, have received lessons which they, in their turn, have given to their children. 

 And when I think of all that this involves of nearness to nature, which forms so true an 

 essential of education, and which, without such help as this Society has given, would be 

 to-day little more than a name among our teachers and our pupils, I feel that I have the 

 right, in behalf of the public schools of Boston and of the whole community, to thank the 

 Society of Natural History for the help which they have given us. Nearness to nature, 

 as I said, is one of the great essentials of education, but it has been one of the most diffi- 



