Mabch 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



337 



the highest honor from us for their great 

 achievements. 



I wish to express my admiration for their 

 work; and believe that they have justly 

 merited the award of the Langley medal 

 by their magnifieent demonstrations of 

 mechanical flight. 



MEMORIAL TO TEE LATE MORRIS 

 EETCBVM JESUP^ 



Members of the Ameiican Museum of 

 Natural History: We commemorate this 

 afternoon the founding of the museiun in 

 1869. For their services to our city and 

 country we pay our tribute to the first 

 presidents, John David Wolfe and Robert 

 L. Stuart, and especially to the third presi- 

 dent, Morris Ketchum Jesup, distinguished 

 by his long and eventful administration. 



As the oldest institution of the kind in 

 the city of New York we welcome represen- 

 tatives of our twin sister, the Metropolitan 

 Museum of Art, of our younger com- 

 panions the Public Library, the Brooklyn 

 Museum, the Zoological Park, the Aqua- 

 rium and the Botanical Garden— all ani- 

 mated by the same purpose, all under a 

 similar government, and together forming 

 a chain of free educational institutions of 

 which the city may well be proud. 



We are honored by the presence of dele- 

 gates from the president of the United 

 States, fi'om the governor of this state, 

 from several of the great American uni- 

 versities and national institutions of scien- 

 tific research. 



The leading officers of the city govern- 

 ment and of the board of education are 

 present. His honor, the mayor, the presi- 

 dent of the park department and the comp- 

 troller are members of our board. It is 

 significant that these heads of the second 

 great municipality of the world are uniting 



' Address of Henry Fairfield Osborn at the cele- 

 bration of the forty-first anniversary of the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History. 



with us to play the part of hosts in this 

 celebration, because the city and trustees 

 have enjoyed from the first a free and cor- 

 dial union. From their entire community 

 of purpose there is no reason why they 

 should ever disagree. Through the orig- 

 inal application of the museum for land, 

 this institution is legally under the depart- 

 ment of parks, but although the relation is 

 amicable and effective, the museums are 

 less a part of public recreation than of the 

 great civic system of education. 



A few words may be said as to the kind' 

 of educational spirit which has been devel- 

 oped under past administrations and will- 

 be increasingly developed in the coming 

 years in other branches of science. They 

 are words as to our future. We believe that 

 we are only on the threshold of the appli- 

 cations of science, or knowledge of the laws 

 of nature as they bear on human morals, 

 welfare and happiness. If there is one new 

 direction which this museum shall take it 

 is in the applications of science to human 

 life. Here people shall have a vision not 

 only of the beauty, the romance, the wonder 

 of nature, but of man's place in nature, of 

 laws as inexorable as the moral commands 

 of God handed down by great religious 

 teachers. Over the portals of our new hall 

 of public health we may well place the 

 inscription, "Learn the Natural Command- 

 ments of God and Obey Them. ' ' If nature 

 is stern and holds in one hand the penalty 

 for violation of her laws, she is also gentle 

 and beneficent and holds in the other hand 

 the remedy, which it is the duty of science 

 to discover and make Imown. 



What is the part the museum exhibition 

 halLs should play in this teaching? An 

 ideal museiun is a mute school, a speechless 

 university, a voiceless pulpit; its sermons 

 are written in stones, its books in the life 

 of the running brooks; every specimen, 

 every exhibition, every well-arranged hall 



