1VS0.| *>i * |McKenn. 



5th. The reformation of many departments of general 

 and local governments, by the appointment to offices, re- 

 quiring scientific knowledge, of men qualified to perform the 

 duties; and in truth, by a cheerful recognition of the fact, 

 that men of science are not inferior to ordinary men, either 

 in capacity or integrity in the transaction of business. It 

 has become too much the habit of unthinking persons to 

 confuse the earnest student of progressive science, the man of 

 practical thought, who often makes a life-long sacrifice of 

 "such things as men possess,"* with the inventor; who with 

 eye to prospective profit is sometimes led into visionary 

 schemes, based upon imperfect information, or into attempts 

 to prematurely introduce contrivances, well devised perhaps 

 in principle, but not needed for the present desires of the 

 community. 



And it is my firm conviction, under the Providence, 

 which presides over, and directs the system of Evolution, 

 that none of these reliances of humanity will be vain. 



9. Daily and Periodical Literature, 



Mr. W. V. McKean, Philadelphia. 



"To aim at learning without books, is with Danaides to draw water in a sieve." 



—R. Williams (1639). 



Mr. McKean, after a few playful observations expressing 

 his astonishment at finding himself set down for a speech 

 in the pretty little book containing the menu and the pro- 

 gramme, when he had decidedly asked to be excused from 

 speaking upon the valid ground that he, being among the 

 youngest of the American Philosophers present, preferred to 



* Mailer, Sacred Books of the East, I, 78. 



