CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 13 



Smile at their first small ventures as we may, 

 The schoolboy's copy shapes the scholar's hand, 



Their grateful memory fills our hearts to-day : 



Brave, hopeful, wise, this bower of peace they planned, 

 While war's dread ploughshare scarred the sufi'eriiig laud. 



Child of our children's children yet unborn. 

 When on tliis yellow page you turn your eyes. 



Where the brief record of this Mayday morn 

 In phrase antique and faded letters lies. 

 How vague, how pale, our flitting ghosts will rise ! 



Yet in our veius the blood ran warm and red. 

 For us the fields were green, the skies were blue, 



Though from our dust the spirit long has fled. 



We lived, we loved, we toiled, we dreamed like you. 

 Smiled at our sires and thought how much we kne^\^ 



Oh might our spirits for one hour return, 

 When the next century rouuds its hundredth ring. 



All the strange secrets it shall teach to learn, 

 To hear the larger truths its years shall bring, 

 Its wiser sages talk, its sweeter minstrels sing! 



BY PROFESSOR ASA GRAY. 



Mr. Chairman: — Although called iipon in another capacity, allow me, first of all, to acquit 

 myself of a commission. The Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg has instructed me to 

 appear as its delegate upon this occasion, and has charged me to present this document, conveying the 

 formal congratulations of its president, vice-president, perpetual secretary, and the principal resident 

 academicians, attested by their signatures. It speaks of the services which our society has rendered 

 to science and learning during the past century as a warrant for high expectations in the future. 

 You will excuse me from reading the Latin document. The Eussian pronunciation of Latin is so 

 different from the American that I might not be readily understood. 



Let this serve as a specimen of the various addresses of congratulation of a similar character 

 from learned societies of Europe which our Academy has received. 



And now, Mr. Chairman, your call upon me as the representative of the past — not exactly as the 

 veteran who lags superfluous on the stage, because you have occasion to use me as a link between 

 the present and the olden time, and so I am not quite superfluous — is certainly one which brings 

 up serious thought. It does appear that, since the death of my venerable predecessor, Dr. Bigelow, 



