784 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 960 



trasted so agreeably with the disgusting 

 quarrels, happily rare, which sometimes 

 arose among men of science. 



As you have made me speak here, I am 

 forced to say something of myself, and 

 hence this anecdote of Wyman. I had 

 written him word of the discovery I had 

 made of the chiasm of the superior laryn- 

 geal nerves in the chelonia — that is to say, 

 turtles — and it greatly excited him, espe- 

 cially my prediction that it would be found 

 in serpents and probably in birds. A year 

 afterwards he sent me a large bundle of 

 illustrations and descriptions of what he 

 had found in other classes than the turtle, 

 and insisted that I should use them in the 

 second paper I was about to print, stating 

 that they would not have been discovered 

 had it not been for my predictive aid. Of 

 course, I declined this help; but it was 

 characteristic of the noblest form of the 

 scientific mind. 



You will, I trust, pardon me if I close 

 this long talk with a few too personal words 

 about the much loved first director of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, first of the men 

 who sacrificed to that Institution a scien- 

 tific career. When a boy about fifteen 

 years old, I was sent by my father to Pro- 

 fessor Henry at Princeton with some glass 

 apparatus, which could not otherwise be 

 sent without danger of breakage. 



He met me at the station, took me to the 

 house, and spent a part of the next morn- 

 ing endeavoring to explain to my bewil- 

 dered youth the experiments he was making 

 in the transmission of electric signals. I 

 was overcome by the unwonted attention 

 paid to a boy of my age, and expressed 

 myself so warmly that he laughed as he 

 bade me good bye, saying: "Well, life 

 sometimes gives one a chance to return 

 little favors, and perhaps some day you 

 will have an opportiinity to oblige me." 



Long years passed by, and some time in 



the beginning of 1878 Professor Henry 

 asked me to come to Washington and ad- 

 vise him. After a thorough examination 

 of his case, he asked me plainly if he was 

 mortally ill. I said, "Yes." Then he 

 asked how long he had to live, but I could 

 not set a date. He said, "Six months?" 

 Hardly, I thought. He died in May of 

 that year. 



As I arose to go away, his carriage wait- 

 ing, he said: "I have yet to discharge my 

 material obligation. How much am I in 

 debt to you ? " I replied, ' ' You are not in 

 debt. There are no debts for the Dean of 

 American Science." 



He was miich overcome, and said: "I 

 have always found the world full of kind- 

 ness to me, and now here it is again." I 

 could only say: "You do not remember, 

 sir, that once you said to me, a boy, when 

 you had been very kindly attentive to me 

 and I tried to express my obligation, that 

 perhaps a time might come when I could 

 oblige you. If this obliges you, my time 

 has come." And so we parted. 



I may add what some of you already 

 know, that Alexander Agassiz wrote me he 

 had intended to return home early from 

 Europe, in order to give a dinner such as 

 we are having here to-night. He died on 

 the way over, and his letter reached me after 

 his death — strangely enough, the fourth 

 letter I have received from men who were 

 not alive at the time their words reached me. 



My talk has been of men dead long ago, 

 but I should be ungrateful to the longest 

 friendship of my life if I did not pause to 

 remind you of our latest loss in John Shaw 

 Billings. He was a man of too many com- 

 petencies to allow of even allusive conunent 

 here. Few men have been better loved or 

 had so enviable a capacity to convert mere 

 acquaintance into friendship. 



It is difficult for a man as old as I am 

 to talk in the gay after-dinner mood, and 



