REMARKS BY DR. WE E. LEONARD 



Mr. President and Fellow Members of the Academy: 



It is not from lack of respect for the noble gentleman and 

 eminent scientist whose memory we honor here tonight, that I 

 do not present my remarks in manuscript form, but rather from 

 a sense of the meagerness and personal nature of what I have 

 to say. 



My recollections of Prof. Winchell go back to my student 

 days at the University, when in our Junior year we were re- 

 quired to take a course in Geology and Mineralogy, there being 

 few electives in those days. We looked forward to a very dry 

 time over a dry subject; but within a week, being introduced to 

 a real teacher, we all became enthusiastic learners. Through his 

 genius in giving to dry facts and objects lively connection with 

 a real science, he interested us at once. He inspired us with 

 his enthusiasm, and put life into the stones in the class-room. 

 His untiring patience with our ignorance, his desire to make us 

 learn thoroughly what we did learn, was in itself an education. 

 I have forgotten all the Geology long ago, but learned to love 

 the noble character who taught us. Thus he left an impress 

 upon hundreds of the everyday students, besides training up a 

 score or more of real geologists, some of whom are here tonight 

 to pay tribute to him. 



In the summer of 1875 I was chosen to accompany him on 

 the Survey, and started out with him one June day to drive down 

 the state, with the horse and platform wagon, which he termed 

 the "state wagon." My numerous questions about birds and 

 plants, — crude and ignorant as they were, no doubt, tired him, 

 and he finally said, "You drive for a while and I'll read from 

 this book, and then I'll drive for a while and you read." The 

 book was Dickens' Great Expectations. 



( )n this day and night we fared to Spring Valley, when he 

 set me at work on field notes of railroad cuts, wells, etc., in 

 and around that town, — in the Fillmore County, so famous geo- 

 logically, as has been said here tonight. Those few notes occupy 

 a small space in the report for that year, — a very, very meagre 

 addition to his stupendous labors of all those years. 



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