4 SMITHSONIAN -MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8o 



until his death. He became first a member, then a Vice-President, 

 and then President for five years of the National Academy of Sciences. 



Doctor Walcott was of substantial assistance in promoting coopera- 

 tion among the many agencies which were called upon to prepare the 

 enormous material which the country produced and the War de- 

 manded. He made the supreme sacrifice of a son in that great conflict. 



Toward the close of his association with the Smithsonian, he saw 

 the necessity for increasing its usefulness by a large private endow- 

 ment, and he himself contributed substantially, both in life and by 

 will, to that endowment. 



Doctor Walcott made himself. His career is a long list of arduous 

 deeds done in helping the cause of geological science and in helping 

 the government by a disinterested devotion to its usefulness in many 

 scientific avenues. He was a civil servant of the highest value. 



Our government of course is made up of a great many dififerent 

 personal factors. We cannot escape in our minds giving to it a qujasi 

 personal character which it derives mainly from those whose relation 

 to it in its administration is non-political but constant in carrying on 

 its activities, with no ambition moving them except the country's 

 progress toward better things. Through all the departments of the 

 government will be found men who have given their lives to the 

 cause, without publicity, without advertisement, without profit. Their 

 happiness and their reward are in the achievements of the govern- 

 ment itself and its departments in which they play a part. Walcott 

 was a leader of this kind among such men. 



The authorities of the Smithsonian have felt that this meeting 

 should be held in memory of a man whose work promoted real 

 scientific investigation and discovery in his particular field, who was 

 a shining example of a government civil servant of the highest ideals 

 and success, and who for twenty years gave greatly of his energies 

 and the hardest kind of labor to expanding the usefulness of the 

 Smithsonian Institution. 



