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A D D K E S S. 



MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE SOCIETY : 



WHEN I received your kind invitation to appear 

 before you on this occasion, I immediately wrote a 

 reply, in which, after expressing- my grateful acknowl- 

 edgment of the honor done me, I respectfully declined 

 it. In that reply, I stated that, although I had ever 

 felt a deep interest in the affairs of this Society, and 

 had at different times contributed a few trifling things, 

 from my own neighborhood, to its collections, yet my 

 diffidence and ignorance of what would be expected 

 of me, would make me extremely reluctant to appear 

 before it on this occasion, even if I could do it without 

 having any fears of bringing discredit upon myself or 

 upon the Institution. But when I considered the 

 opportunities I had enjoyed, and my qualifications for 

 this position, (or rather the want of them,) an accept- 

 ance of the invitation appeared to me to be little less 

 than downright presumption : and I there stated 

 that, for a person who had always resided, as I had 

 done, among the Green Mountains of Vermont who 

 had never been so far from home as Boston, perhaps, a 

 dozen times in his life who had done what little he 

 had done in the business of Natural History, without 

 any associates engaged in like pursuits without hav- 

 ing access to any collections of specimens and almost 



