CuUfovnia S^caclcmM ot f cicmt^. 



Eegulae Meeting, December 6tli, 1875. 



Mr. President and Members of the Academy : 



Since our last meeting the telegraph lias bronglit us sad 

 news— information of the death of our fellow-member, the 

 Hon. Benjamin Parke Avery, United States Minister to 

 China, who died in the early part of November at the city 

 of Peking. 



The many excellences of the deceased, the co-operative 

 spirit which he ever manifested in all matters pertaining 

 to the welfare of his fellow-men— quietly, because he was 

 singularly modest and undemonstrative, yet nevertheless 

 persistingly pursuing the even tenor of what he considered 

 his duty — and that duty the advancement of civilization in 

 a new State, the promotion of knowledge, whether in Lit- 

 erature, Science, or Art,— and the general refinement and 

 elevation of the Commonwealth in which he had made his 

 home ; such qualities and such services make it eminently 

 proper, that we should inscribe on the permanent records 

 of the Academy, an appreciative recognition of his life and 

 labors, as well as an appropriate expression of our esteem, 

 and of our sorrow for his loss. 



With the example of his unassuming but honorable ca- 

 reer before us,— too brief but yet well filled with useful 

 work, — it would be in discord with its harmony, to expand 

 these remarks into formal eulogy. 



In a letter dated July 5th of this year, the last which I 

 received, he wrote : 



" Shut within the walls of our Legation, we are as much alone as if we 

 were in one of the old glacial wombs of the Sierra Nevada— to think of 

 which makes me sigh with longing, for was I not born anew therefrom, a 

 recuperated child of Nature? Your letter with bay-leaves was right wel- 



