674 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII, No. 1115 



I owe my presence here to the circumstance 

 which is alike honorable and agreeable to me, that 

 the first superintendent of the Coast Survey, 

 which now has grown so great and celebrated, was 

 the Swiss engineer Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler. 



At all times in the history of the United States 

 some of my countrymen may be found, who as- 

 sisted in the development of this country and who 

 have made a place for themselves in the hearts of 

 grateful Americans. 



The activities of Professor Hassler, as founder 

 of two of your great national enterprises, that is, 

 of the Coast Survey and the Bureau of Standards, 

 took place in the first half of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. A retrospect shows us, that during those 

 fifty years my countryman had as contemporaries 

 several distinguished Swiss, who emigrated to this 

 country at about the same time. First among 

 them, it gives me particular pleasure to mention 

 Hassler 's friend, Albert Gallatin, of Geneva. 



Actuated by the same spirit as Lafayette, Gal- 

 latin at the age of eighteen crossed the ocean in 

 order to fight for American independence. Later 

 on he achieved the highest honors open to a Swiss 

 in this country. He was not only the first for- 

 eign-born Senator of the United States, but for 

 twelve years he served with acknowledged ability 

 and success as Secretary of the Treasury under 

 Jefferson and Madison. He went to England with 

 John Quincy Adams as a peace commissioner and 

 remained abroad until 1823 as Minister to Paris. 

 After his return he declined the offer of the Dem- 

 ocratic party to become a candidate for the Vice- 

 presidency, because he wished to devote aU his 

 time to his scientific studies of finance, history 

 and ethnology. 



Not less well known to you, gentlemen, is the 

 name of the Swiss naturalist, Louis Jean Eudolph 

 Agassiz, of Metier, who during the twenty-seven 

 years of his incumbency made famous the chair of 

 zoology at Harvard. His son, Alexander Agassiz, 

 who was born at Neuchatel in 1833, and who 

 labored in the same field of research at Harvard 

 as his father, was at one time an aid in the Coast 

 Survey, with which he remained closely associated, 

 as shown in his book "Three Cruises of the 

 Blake." A very special reason for mentioning 

 his name is that he was so highly esteemed by 

 President Cleveland that the latter offered him 

 the superintendency of the survey, but Agassiz 

 preferred to continue his favorite researches. 



The Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. Josephus 

 Daniels, spoke of the cooperation between the 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey and the navy and 



called particular attention to the fact that for a 

 number of years naval of&cers were detaOed for 

 duty in the survey, where they had charge of the 

 vessels engaged upon the hydrographic work. 

 When the Spanish war began the naval officers 

 returned to the regular naval duties on the fleets. 

 Since that time all of the work of the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey has been done by civilians. 



The Secretary of Commerce, the Hon. William 

 C. Eedfield, said in part: 



The record of service that we close to-night is 

 one of which any group of men may well be proud. 

 The fine traditions of this service that survive in 

 your hearts I know are dear to you. I know a 

 little of what they have meant to you of personal 

 sacrifice and of struggle under adverse conditions. 

 I know what you have done in the lonely places of 

 the world, unseen and unwatched, untold, with 

 none to advertise. I want it known that we here 

 know and appreciate and honor the men who 

 carry the burden and heat of the day. 



The work of surveying and engineering is not 

 spectacular. It is not comfortable to climb a 

 mountain peak with a pack of instruments upon 

 your back. There is nothing that gets readily 

 glorified in being a victim to mosquitoes in 

 Alaska. 



There are fine traditions in this survey and 

 there are curious ones. I think it is not generally 

 known that the artist Whistler was a draftsman in 

 the Coast Survey. He is said by his fellow drafts- 

 man, who was a grandson of Francis Seott Key, 

 the author of the ' ' Star Spangled Banner, ' ' to 

 have made more sketches than he did dravrings. 



I want to speak to you very briefly of the pres- 

 ent and the future of the Coast Survey; what it 

 is, what it has with which to work, what its task 

 is, what it hopes to do. 



The work is splendid in its sweep, from the Sulu 

 Sea just north of Borneo to the cold waters of 

 Alaska in the Pacific, and from the tropical 

 waters around Florida to the Canadian coast in 

 the Atlantic, and on all the continental area of the 

 United States between, and all along the back- 

 ward limits of Alaska. 



Dr. T. C. Mendenhall, former superintendent of 

 the Coast and Geodetic Survey, took as his theme 

 the salient features of the careers of the various 

 superintendents of the survey, starting with 

 Hassler. He sketched the development and prog- 

 ress of the survey during its one hundred years of 

 existence and expressed the hope that its work 

 during the next century might compare in char- 

 acter with that of the first. 



