THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEKTING. 3) 
The broken skeleton was placed in the kettle which was put in the back end of 
the wagon often used by the professor on geological excursions. On returning 
to his home J looked back in the wagon and saw the bones in the kettle, and told 
the professor it reminded me of a passage of scripture. He asked what passage. 
I told him it was recorded in 2 Kings iv: 40: ‘*O thou man of God, there is death 
in the pot.’’ 
Perhaps you may remember that Professor Mudge lived very much in the 
past, and knew almost everything in geological history, but did not always keep 
up with current events. One time he was visiting us at the institution for the 
blind, at the time of meeting of the board of trustees. We wereall sitting at the 
long table in the dining-room—the trustees, teachers, Professor Mudge, and my 
family. Professor Mudge was deploring the fact that writers in Eastern papers 
would misrepresent Kansas and exaggerate. One of the trustees asked him to 
give some example where a writer had exaggerated. ‘‘ Well,’’ said the Professor 
slowly, in his sober, unassuming way, trying to call up an example, ‘recently I 
saw a letter in an Eastern paper where a writer, in describing the grasshopper 
scare, actually stated that when the grasshoppers visited Kansas they were three 
feet deep at Topeka.’’ The trustee asked him who wrote the article. Professor 
Mudge replied that he had almost forgotten the name of the writer; but after a 
moment he added, trying to recall it, ‘‘I believe it was Eli—Eli—it seems to 
me it was Eli Perkins!’’ The whole company, of course, burst into a roar of 
laughter, and Professor Mudge, whose awakened memory and quick perception 
took in the situation, laughed as heartily as the others. We all agreed with 
Professor Mudge in his proposition that writers would sometimes exaggerate, but 
the example given of a humorist did not prove it. 
The thousand dollars which the friends of science put into Professor Mudge’s 
monument at Manhattan was simply a token of the deep and abiding love which 
all classes felt forhim. His largescientific knowledge; his modesty and unassum- 
ing manners; his purity of character and sweetness of disposition; his wonderful 
activity, both physical and mental, up to the day of his death—for when he re- 
ceived the paralytic stroke that terminated his life he was preparing one of his 
charming lectures—all of these things give him a place and a name that will re- 
main sacred in Kansas as long as science is cultivated on the great central plains 
of North America. I remember that Chancellor Snow once said that Professor 
Mudge was about equal to three ordinary men. 
Well, I want you to tell all the members of the Karsas Academy of Science 
that my heart goes out tothem wonderfully. Inall my scientific work, noscientists 
have come quite so close to me, and been so dear to my heart, as those in Kansas. 
I wish I could attend the meeting at Topeka. How the recollections rush upon 
me as I think of the scientific associations which it has been my privilege to 
originate, viz.: 
Kansas Academy of Science, 
Kansas City Academy of Science, 
Nebraska Academy of Science, and 
California Science Association. 
Out of these, I am told, have sprung the 
Indiana Academy of Science and 
Ohio Academy of Science. 
These are the children and grandchildren of a wonderful scientific family. 
The field of all these associations covers a third of a million square miles; ten 
millions of people live in it; and a thousand scientists are connected with these 
associations, it is estimated. What hath God wrought in the West, by the 
humblest instrumentality ! Fraternally, Jouns D. ParKER. 
