6 Transactions of the 



Ah. ! that I conld make you understand what an interest 

 that is — the interest of the health, the wealth, the wisdom of 

 generations yet unborn. Ah. ! that I could make you under- 

 stand what a noble thing it is to be men of science, rich with 

 the sound learning which man can neither give nor take 

 away : useful to thousands whom you have never seen, but 

 Avho may be blessing your name hundreds of years after you 

 are mouldering in the grave, the equals and companions of 

 the most noble, and the most powerful, taking a rank higher 

 than the Queen herself can give, by right of that knowledge, 

 Avhich is power. 



But I must not expect you to see this yet ; all I can do is 

 to hope that my words may be fulfilled hereafter, that this 

 museum may be the starting point of a school of scientific 

 men — few it may be in number, but strong, because bound 

 together by common afifection for their College and their 

 museum and each other — scattered perhaps over the world, 

 but communicating their discoveries to each other without 

 jealousy or dispute, and sending home their prizes to enrich 

 the stoi*es of their old museum, and to teach learning to the 

 generations of lads who will be here while they are grown 

 men doing the work of men over the world. 



Ah ! that it might so happen — ah ! that even one great 

 man of science might be bred up in these halls — one man 

 who should discover a great truth or do a great deed for the 

 benefit of his fellow men ! 



If this College museum could produce but one master of 

 natural knowledge like Murchison or Lyell, Owen or Huxley, 

 Faraday or Grove, or even one great discoverer like Ross or 

 Baker or Speke, who has just solved the mystery of ages, 

 the mj'stery after which Lucan makes Julius Csesar long as the 

 summit of his ambition — to leave others to conquer nations 

 while he himself sought for the hidden sources of the Mle, — 

 or if it should even produce one man able and learned enough 

 to do such a deed as that performed by my friend Clement 

 Markham, who penetrated, in the face of danger and death, 

 the trackless forests of the Andes, to brmg home thence those 

 plants of Peruvian bark, which now, planted into Hindostan, 

 will save the lives of tens of thousands, English and Hindoos, 

 — then all the ti'ouble, all the care, Avhich shall have been 

 spent on this museum^ — I had almost said, upon this whole 

 College — will have been well repaid. 



