CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 5 







place of the first American philosophical society that we hail it especially on this 

 occasion, and welcome the delegates from that city and from that society with an 

 exceptional emphasis and fervor. We welcome, indeed, most heartily to this occa- 

 sion every one of the delegates who have honored us by their presence from other 

 cities and States, and from other institutions, American and foreign ; from Washington, 

 from New York and New Hampshire, from Connecticut and Iowa and California, from 

 Italy and France and Russia, from Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Germany 

 and Sweden, from the Dominion of Canada and from old England, and from where- 

 soever else beneath the sun they may have come to our festival ; and we shall hope 

 for an opportunity of expressing our acknowledgments to them all at a later hour of 

 the day, if not now. But they will all pardon us, I am sure, for confining our first 

 individual recognition, here and now, to the parent American Philosophical Society of 

 Philadeljihia. 



That Society originated in a time of colonial peace and quietness. Our Academy 

 had its origin while the war of independence was still in progress, while the princi- 

 ples of republican equality were on every tongue and in every heart, and when our 

 honored founders would have been foremost in protesting against anythino- which 

 looked like a recognition of hereditary rights or claims to consideration. Yet I 

 cannot forget, not merely that the distinction of presiding on this occasion has been 

 assigned to the oldest living descendant of our first president, James Bowdoin, but that 

 it was to have been my privilege and pleasure, in a few moments, to present to you 

 the oldest living descendant of him, who, more than any other one man, is to be 

 remembered this day as the founder of our Academy, the illustrious John Adams. 

 Having succeeded Governor Bowdoin as president of the Academy, and having him- 

 self been succeeded, after no very long interval, by his hardly less illustrious son, 

 John Quincy Adams, the chair which they both filled is now occupied and adorned 

 by a third scion of the same distinguished stock. Primo et secundo avulsis, " non 

 deficit alter aureus ; " or, if I may borrow a line from the translation of the yEneid, 

 by his Excellency Governor Long, whose necessary absence we all regret, I may 

 say, — 



"The first torn off, 

 There lacks not still another branch of gold." 



Having been our minister at London during a very critical period, and our com- 

 missioner at Geneva at the great arbitration, the Academy were proud to place at 

 their head one so deservedly distinguished at home and abroad, and we relied upon 



