335 
worthy of State support reached us as a legacy from a foreign 
savant. 
Michaux had traveled extensively in this country, alone and also 
in company with his father. While he recognized the crude condi- 
tion of much of what he saw, indeed of what we were proud, and 
criticised it freely, he, nevertheless, retained a feeling of respect 
and affection for the young Republic where he was hospitably re- 
ceived and of which he evidently entertained great hopes. 
His will provided that, after the death of his wife, his property 
should be divided between the Agricultural Society of Massachu- 
setts and the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. It 
was specified that the money so received was to be utilized in the 
interest of agriculture and forestry. 
It also befits the time that the part taken by another member of 
this Society in the institution of the Michaux lectures should be re- 
corded. 
It was to the late Eli K. Price that the idea of commemorating 
Michaux, the testator, in this manner seems first to have occurred. 
He was not led from the plain conditions of the bequest into any 
illusions which the will neither contemplated nor allowed. The 
money was clearly devoted to the most practical of sciences, and it 
is creditable to this Society that it has been conscientiously so ex- 
pended. 
We may fairly measure the value of the work done in moulding 
public sentiment into healthy form, when it is remembered that it 
was in these Michaux lectures the following points were first sug- 
gested as representing a healthful public policy for Pennsylvania. 
1. That the individual forest owner is under moral obligations 
not to recklessly despoil the State by waste of timber resources ; and 
that it is equally the duty of the State to see that he does not impair 
the future prosperity of the Commonwealth by any willful extrava- 
gance. ‘This follows from the simple proposition that the first duty 
of a State is to provide for its own perpetuity. It is for this reason 
that we submit to legal control ; for without perpetuity the strong 
inducement to thrift, in the interest of our children, is lacking. 
2. That so long as any owner of timber land allowed his timber 
to stand, he receiving no benefit therefrom, he was entitled to an 
exemption from taxes because the chief value of trees under such 
conditions was to hoard water for a community at a distant point. 
