CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 23 



centennial. Wishing you and your association prosperity, I will say, "Go on, pros] ring and to 

 prosper"; and may your latter days be your best days, but far in the centuries of the future I hope. 



Mr. Alexander Agassiz was called upon as a representative of two or three acade- 

 mies, with the understanding, however, that he should not be obliged to make more 

 than one speech, lie said: 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: — This is the first intimation I have had that I was a representa- 

 tive of any society here; but, as I generally appear under somewhat dubious conditions, I am very 

 much obliged to the President for not calling upon me, as I am usually called upon, as "the distin- 



guished son of a distinguished father," I have become so accustom I to this that I have begun to 



doubt whether I have any identity of my own ; and it reminds me of a similar occasion when, not 



the great Beethoven, but another B« thoven, was called npon to s] ak. ]le was himself the m of 

 a distinguished musician, and the father of the gr< it Beethoven, and he said he did not know whether 

 he was to answer for his father or for his son, whom he expected to become a very distinguished 

 individual. And as I am in about the same position — my oldest son expects to enter Cambridge 



the coming year — I will simply express the hope that he will be the distinguished member of the 

 family. But, Mr. Pn ident, there is one society for whom I believe 1 am a representative, which you 



did not mention, and that is the Academy of Bologna; and I suppose that the reason for which I 

 was chosen as the representative of that society is that Bologna has always been famous for the 

 support which it has given to the education of women. Now, if I am not mistaken, about a year 

 ago, with some other gentlemen connected with the college, we made a faint attempt to enlarge the 

 boundaries, not of Harvard College, but of the Harvard Medical School, in winch we most signally 

 failed ; and I suppose it is to alleviate my feeling of disappointment that Bologna, which has had 

 among its professors of medicine some most distinguished women, has chosen me to represent her 

 on this occasion, and to send her congratulations to our Academy. 



Dr. Henry 0. Marcy, of Cambridge, responded as a delegate from the Academy of 

 Sciences of Bologna in these words : 



It gave him great pleasure to present the congratulations of the Academy at Bologna to this 

 assembly, gathered to celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of the American Academy of Arts and 



Sciences. 



Italy looks with profound respect upon the institutions of learning in their vigorous growth and 

 development in America. 



Other speakers have discussed the priority of the establishment of the various scientific bodh 

 here represented. The Academy of Sciences at Bologna was established in the sixteenth century; 

 but it will be remembered that it is itself the child of the University so celebrated during the many 

 centuries at Bologna. When thus considered, it certainly looks upon tins Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, although dignified with age to us, as a pretending stripling, for it has had occasion to hold 

 more than fourteen such centennial celebrations. 



