228 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



asked permission to propose Maury's name as their 

 president, but he decHned the proposal. Inquiry was 

 also made of him whether he would accept the presidency 

 of a Polytechnic College to be founded at New Orleans. 

 This appealed to him, particularly on the score of his 

 health, but the project did not materialize. 



In addition to his work on the ''Physical Survey of 

 Virginia" and his geographical series, Maury spent con- 

 siderable time upon the preparation and delivery of 

 lectures and addresses, not in great numbers during his 

 first two years at Lexington but with increasing fre- 

 quency during the last years of his life. Among the 

 notable speeches he made during 1869 were an address 

 to the graduating class of V. M. I., July 2, and another 

 before the Educational Association of Virginia, on De- 

 cember 16. In the former, he emphasized the fact that 

 what they accomplished in life would depend largely on 

 their own 'resolves', that they had not 'finished' their 

 education but merely laid the foundation, that they 

 should desire to master the specialty they took up but 

 not to become narrow-minded, and that they should 

 form the habit of observing nature for there they would 

 see God. In closing, he called upon them to live up to 

 their traditions. The later address is a plea for the 

 giving of more attention in the educational system to the 

 study of the physical sciences in view of the progress and 

 development of physical discoveries; it began with the 

 statement that the study of science should not make 

 atheists, if the subject was rightly interpreted. 



Maury often lectured to the students of Virginia Mil- 

 itary Institute, though he gave no regular courses of 

 instruction; for example, in 1872 he gave a series of 

 lectures to the cadets on "What We Owe to Science". 



