CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 23 



centennial. Wishing you and your association prosperity, I will say, " Go on, prosjjering and to 

 prosper"; and may your latter days be your best days, but far in tlie centuries of the futiu'e I liopc. 



Mr. Alexander Agassiz was called upon as a representative of two or three acade- 

 mies, with the understanding, however, that he should not be obliged to make more 

 than one speech. He said : — 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : — This is the first intimation I have had that I was a representa- 

 tive of any society here ; but, as I generally appear under somewhat dubious conditions, I am very 

 much obliged to the President for not calling upon me, as I am usually called upon, as " the distin- 

 guished son of a distinguished father." I have become so accustomed to this that I have begun to 

 doubt whether 1 have any identity of my own ; and it reminds me of a similar occasion when, not 

 the great Beethoven, but another Beetlioven, was called upon to speak. He was himself the son of 

 a distinguished musician, and the fatlier of the great Beethoven, and he said he did not know whether 

 he was to answer for his father or for his son, whom he expected to become a very distinguished 

 individual. And as I am in about the same position — my oldest son expects to enter Cambridge 

 the coming year — I will simply express the hope that he will be the distinguished member of the 

 family. But, Mr. President, there is one society for whom I believe I am a representative, which you 

 did not mention, and that is the Academy of Bologna ; and I suppose that the reason for which I 

 was chosen as the representative of that society is that Bologna has always been famous for the 

 support which it has given to the education of women. Now, if I am not mistaken, about a year 

 ago, with some other gentlemen connected with the college, we made a faint attempt to enlarge the 

 boundaries, not of Harvard College, but of the Harvard Medical School, in which we most signally 

 failed ; and I suppose it is to alleviate my feeling of disappointment that Bologna, which has liad 

 among its professors of medicine some most distinguished women, has chosen me to represent her 

 on this occasion, and to send her congratulations to our Academy. 



Dr. Henry 0. Marcy, of Cambridge, responded as a delegate from the Academy of 

 Sciences of Bolo2;na in these words : — 



o 



It gave him great pleasure to present the congratulations of the Academy at Bologna to this 

 assembly, gathered to celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences. 



Italy looks with profound respect upon the institutions of learning in their vigorous growth and 

 development in America. 



Other speakers have discussed the priority of the establishment of the various scientific bodies 

 here represented. The Academy of Sciences at Bologna was established in the sixteenth century ; 

 but it will be remembered that it is itself the child of the University so celebrated during the many 

 centuries at Bologna. When thus considered, it certainly looks upon tiiis Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, although dignified with age to us, as a pretending stripling, for it has had occasion to hold 

 more than fourteen such centennial celebrations. 



