440 Historical Sketch of Minnesota Academy of Science 



McGolrick's peaceful and faithful service as trustee had at last effect- 

 ed as a settlement of the two years' arrears of rent with Mr. Kelly. 



The other historical event is the "Menage Scientific Expedition 

 to the Philippine Islands," the inception and history of which is told 

 in the Bulletin "Proceedings" from April 8, 1890, to November, 1894, 

 in the "Preliminary Notes on the Birds and Mammals Collected by 

 the Menage Expedition," which form sixty-four pages of the first 

 issue of "Occasional Papers" of the Academy, and in the "Letters 

 from Dean C- Worcester and Frank S. Bourns, forming the Menage 

 Expedition," in pages 131-172 of Vol. IV. of the Bulletin. 



The collections of this expedition have become celebrated. They 

 embrace a beautiful group of stuffed orangs, said to be the best in 

 existence, other Philippine large animals, numerous alcoholic speci- 

 mens used by the Zoological department of the University of Minne- 

 sota, and the finest and largest collection of Philppine bird-skins ex- 

 tant, the last loaned by the Academy to the Honolulu Museum and 

 used by Mr. Bryan in his work on the birds of the Pacific ocean. 



The project of this expedition was brought to the attention of 

 the Academy by Mr. H. V. Winchell, a college friend of Messrs, Wor- 

 cester and Bourns. Mr. Menage was visited by thes three enthu- 

 siasts, and on condition that the Academy would house and care for 

 the collection, Mr. Menage contributed ten thousand dollars for ex- 

 penses. 



I cannot close this historical sketch of the Academy of Sciences 

 without recording a couple of practical inferences which have grown 

 out of my leisurely traveling through the Academy's history. The 

 first inference is that the Academy's foundation strength lies in a 

 love for the knowledge of nature right about us, especially of our 

 own state. This love of nature for her own sake, stimulating vigor- 

 ous physicians, business men and teachers to use their own senses 

 and hungering intelligence to know about the plants, birds, fish, wa- 

 ters, woods, prairies, rocks, bones and pottery, — all this to better 

 understand our own individual relations to the world of nature and 

 man right about us, — such was the strong character of the founders 

 of the Academy thirty-three years ago, and such intellectual interests 

 have made the honorable and useful recor* of the Academy's first 

 generation of existence. When the Academy has become weakened 

 or desiccated, the cause is evident in the loss of this love of nature 

 and the introduction of the spirit of scientific professionalism. For 

 there is a professionalism of science as well as of bodily exercise. 

 When a student of nature becomes so morbidly developed that his 

 main interest is in displaying his accomplishment or prowess, in col- 

 lecting an ingenious armor of apparatus for his specialized kind of 

 scientific warfare, and then takes his chief scientific exercise in 

 beating his competitors for good salaried positions, — such a scientific 

 athlete crushes out the modest love of nature — not but that micros- 

 copic specialists must exist in the machinery of a true university, or 

 but that much genuine amateur disinterested love of scientific exer- 

 cise is scattered here and there among the professional positions; and 

 the Academy ought to be deeply grateful for the constancy and effi- 

 ciency of such well-tried experience as it has had the good fortune to 

 gain. But its second generation of life, judged from its first, must 



