246 ROCHESTER ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



more moving cause was the appointment of young Mr. Ward, after five 

 years study and work abroad, to the professorship of mineralogy, geology 

 and zoology in the University of Rochester. It was during his work as a 

 teacher that he found how seriously every American teacher of science was 

 hampered and handicapped by the lack of tangible representatives of the 

 beasts, birds and reptiles that abounded in geologic times, and are now 

 extinct. Therefore, for several years in succession, he spent his vacations in 

 the royal museums of Europe, making plaster-of-paris moulds of their rarer 

 and more striking fossils, from which he was afterwards enabled to make 

 perfect plaster copies of the originals for his beloved cabinet in the Uni- 

 versity of Rochester. 



The outcome might easily have been foreseen by a blind man. No sooner 

 were those wonderful casts brought forward than other institutions of learn- 

 ing sought copies from the same mould and 'Ward's Casts of Celebrated 

 Fossils' was the final result. American teachers and students, to whom the 

 originals were inaccessible, were delighted with them. Illustrated cata- 

 logues were issued, the largest of which we used in my alma mater as a 

 textbook. The casts became exceedingly popular, and were an important 

 factor in the final upbuilding of what is now the Ward Establishment. 

 ... in 1869 he gave up his professorship in the University of Rochester.* 

 Embowered in the stately elms and spreading maples that overarch College 

 Avenue, almost in the shadow of the main building of the University, there 

 now stands a group of sixteen buildings of about twelve different sizes, each 

 with a gilded totem at its peak to show the place in nature of its contents. 

 Over the wide gateway to the courtyard . . . the lower jaws of an 

 immense right whale form a gothic arch. As you enter, a conspicuous 

 placard informs you in the most business-like way 'This is not a museum 

 but a working establishment, where all are very busy.' . . . 



His ambition was fully realized at 27 years of age. The collections were placed on 

 exhibition in a large hall at the corner of Main Street and Plymouth Avenue; and at- 

 tracted wide attention. The descriptive pamphlet quotes Dr. James Hall, Dr. John 

 Torrey and Professors Dana, Silliman, Edward Hitchcock, Doremus, James Orton and 

 others, to the effect that the collection as a whole was the finest and most complete in 

 America, if not in the world. But it was beyond the appreciated needs of the institu- 

 tions of that da^, and was a "white elephant." Then President Anderson and the friends 

 of Ward decided that it must remain in Rochester, and a fund of $20,000 was raised by 

 subscription, headed by Lewis Brooks for $5,000, Levi A. Ward for $1,500, and Freeman 

 Clarke and William A. Reynolds for $1,000 each. This list, along with the bill of sale 

 and a brief description of the collection in Ward's own writing, is preserved. 



The price paid was little more than the amount of Ward's debt to his uncle, Levi A. 

 Ward, who had generously financed him. 



The Ward's Natural Science Establishment was subsequent to, and an outgrowth of, 

 the making of the University collections. H. L. F. 



* The instinct of the collector and the desire for travel was so compelling that Ward 

 could not be held to the routine work of the college instructor, and he was not active 

 in the college after about 1865; but his name was carried as "Professor" in the Uni- 

 versity Catalogue until 1875. In 1896 the University gave him the degree LL. D. 



The University Museum contains many of the smaller fossils which were the "originals" 

 in the series of casts. 



