APRIL 5, 1912] 
with his proposition. He was generously 
received and a committee was appointed to 
arrange the expedition, which sailed on 
June 6, 1891, from Brooklyn, under the 
auspices of the academy, to explore the 
Arctic regions. On January 26, 1892, we 
authorized a relief expedition under the 
command of Professor Heilprin. On Sep- 
tember 24, 1892, we officially met the relief 
expedition sailing up the Delaware River 
on the now historic vessel Kite. 
Dr. Hayden, a member of the academy, 
when conducting the United States Geolog- 
ical Survey in the west, made up his scien- 
tific parties largely from our membership. 
The setting apart of the great national 
Yellowstone Park resulted from his numer- 
ous explorations. Every three years this 
institution bestows upon a distinguished 
geologist a gold medal called the Hayden 
Medal, an award which was founded by 
Dr. Hayden’s widow. 
The Pennsylvania Geological Surveys 
were also conducted by our academy mem- 
pers, Rogers and Lesley. 
Our famous colleagues, Leidy and Cope, 
were the pioneers in describing the extinct 
animals from the wonderful deposits of the 
western states. 
I may mention among the more recent 
expeditions the one-under Professor Heil- 
prin to Yucatan and Mexico in 1890, the 
Harrison and Hiller expedition to Sumatra, 
the numerous explorations of Mr. Clarence 
B. Moore, the Rhoads expeditions to British 
Columbia, Colorado and Ecuador, the 
Donaldson-Smith expedition to Somali- 
Land and Lake Rudolph, and the Bond 
expedition to Venezuela, from all of which 
we have received rich returns. 
The academy publications had early a 
world-wide reputation. For many years 
they furnished the only adequate means 
through which American scientists reached 
the naturalists of the world. Contributions 
SCIENCE 
521 
for publication came from all parts of 
America. To-day our Proceedings and 
Journal are exchanged with all the nations 
of the civilized world. It may be inter- 
esting to state here the fact that when the 
famous Pacific railroad surveys were made 
the United States government published 
deseriptions of all the new specimens it 
obtained in the academy Proceedings. 
Passing rapidly over the more important 
departments of our museum, we find among 
mammals a number of the specimens ob- 
tained by Townsend in the far west, made 
known to science in our Journal by our 
correspondents Audubon and Bachman; 
the Harrison Allen collection of bats, the 
Rhoads collection of North American mam- 
mals and the splendid collection of anthro- 
poid apes presented by Dr. Thomas Biddle. 
, Our collection of birds will ever stand as 
a memorial to two of our members, Thomas 
B. Wilson and John Cassin. To Dr. Wil- 
son’s liberality we owe the acquirement of 
the famous Rivoli collection, the Gould col- 
lection and many others. His entire gift, 
comprising some 25,000 specimens, was re- 
garded in 1850 as the finest collection in 
the world. Cassin spent his life in the 
study of this vast collection and his re- 
searches published in our Proceedings made 
our academy famous as an ornithological 
center, while he himself stood preeminent 
among the ornithologists of America. 
The part that the academy played in the 
development of ornithology in America may 
be appreciated by the mere mention of 
those who worked within its walls or pub- 
lished the results of their researches in the 
Proceedings—Nuttall, Bonaparte, Town- 
send, Gambel, Heermann, Harris and Wood- 
house, among our members, and Baird, 
Lawrence, Henry and Coues, among our 
correspondents. 
In our vast series of reptiles, we find the 
material collected and studied by Hallowell, 
