30 



Does this account seem discouraging to our present under- 

 taking? I do not think that it ought to, but quite the con- 

 trary. If, under such conditions, with so Httle material, and — 

 as a reasonable modesty perhaps requires that I should add — 

 under such general management, it was possible then for us 

 to organize a state natural history society and to keep it ac- 

 tively at work for seven years, we ought now, I think, with all 

 our present comparatively immense advantages, to found a 

 state academy of science which shall live and thrive at least 

 for seventy years, and, for all that I can see, for seventy times 

 seven — by which time we shall all have been long relieved from 

 all our responsibilities, and the labors and the honors of scien- 

 tific enterprise will have been handed on to our remote succes- 

 sors. 



