248 ROCHESTER ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



During the ten years of active life after Dr. Hornaday wrote 

 this appreciation, Ward made many long- and arduous journeys. 

 In 1903 he searched every country in Europe except Turkey and 

 Scandinavia for meteorites. In a trip to Persia he faced the Shah, 

 and induced him to cut off a piece of the Viramin siderite. Only 

 a few weeks before his death he made a trip to South America 

 and secured a large piece, 324 pounds, of the famous meteorite 

 which stood on a marble column in the plaza of Santa Rosa, 

 Colombia. The quest for meteorites for the great Ward-Coonley 

 Collection had started another series of world trips. 



"When still a beardless young man he went up the river Niger, in time 

 to tell David Livingstone all about that country, in Sir Roderick Murchison's 

 London drawing room. On the African Island of Fernando Po he was put 

 down on the sand to die comfortably of African fever, but was rescued and 

 nursed back to life by a negro woman. . . . 



Thousands of people there are, also, who know Professor Ward only by 

 correspondence, all written by his own hand, and the cords of letters he has 

 written since I first knew him remind me of his handwriting. It is pecu- 

 liar, and once seen is never forgotten. It is so heavy, so run together and 

 so peculiar that it caused one of his western correspondents to protest as 

 follows : 'If you should ever try to get up a writing school in this vicinity, 

 I will do all I can against you. Why will you persist in writing with 

 a sharp stick, when pens are so cheap?' . . . 



Naturally one is curious to know the religious belief of this strange cos- 

 mopolitan, who has hobnobbed with American puritans, French infidels, 

 Mohammedan Arabs, Chinese Buddhists, and goodness only knows what else. 

 While going down the Red Sea with him bound for the great hot-bed of 

 Mohammedan fanaticism, Jedda, I put the question. 



'I am an agnostic,' was the answer; 'but I would like to be called a 

 Christian agnostic. I would like t6 be spoken of as one possessing the 

 high hopes and ideals of Christianity, except that mine are based on data 

 entirely distinct from those on which Christians base theirs. . . . ' 



I have, of ten wondered how Professor Ward will start on his last jour- 

 ney; whether it will be by accident, or sudden and violent illness in some 

 foreign hotel or steamer. . . . One thing only about this causes him 

 great concern. He is really haunted by a fear that he may chance to die 

 so far from Buffalo that he cannot be scientifically and esthetically cremated, 

 and will be compelled to undergo the ignominy of interment and slow de- 

 composition in mother earth I . . . " 



Singularly, his death occurred in Buffalo ; but it seems a pity 

 that after escaping all the dangers of foreign travel for more than 



