DARWIN MEMORIAL CELEBRATION 
35 
sixty-two; Bache, sixty-three; Baird, thirty-six, and others attached to the 
Smithsonian Institution, and the great government surveys. Baird was 
often a contributor to the publications of the New York Lyceum of Natural 
History. 
In New York was Torrey, a man of sixtv-three, and among others two 
young men, Theodore Nicholas Gill — the senior member of this academy 
— and Daniel Giraud Elliot, now honoring this museum with his presence 
— both born in New York, and both in their early twenties. Not only 
have these two — early identified with the scientific publications of this 
academy — witnessed the change that has taken place during the past fifty 
years, but their long series of contributions to science .admirably illustrate 
the strange power that has been exerted upon zoological work in general, 
and descriptive zoology in particular, by him who came into being one 
hundred years ago. 
In New Haven were James Dwight Dana, forty-six, Daniel C. Gilman, 
twenty-eight, and the Sillimans. 
In Boston, were Agassiz, adored by the people — preeminent among 
teachers — the studious lovable Gray, at one time (1836) librarian of this 
academy, and Jeffries Wyman. Both Agassiz and Gray were about the 
age of Darwin. Jeffries Wyman was a few years their junior; of him 
Lowell has written: 
He widened knowledge and escaped the praise 
He toiled for science, not to draw men’s gaze. 
Under the influence of these, Agassiz, Gray, Jeffries Wyman, there 
gathered at Cambridge, at about this time, what we would now informally 
and affectionately call “a bunch of boys.” Shaler, eighteen; Verrill (who 
has come down from New Haven to be with us this afternoon) and Packard, 
twenty; Morse, Hyatt and Allen — our Dr. Allen — twenty-one; Scudder, 
twenty-two. 
Of the five centers of scientific activity, youth was certainly the charac¬ 
teristic of the school at Boston. It is therefore safe to predict that the germ 
of the new truth in biological science would find a more favorable medium 
in Boston than here in New York or farther south. 
The infection was immediate, indeed “ pre-immediate.” The period 
of incubation extended over about ten years, ending in an acute epidemic 
from 1871-1876, which affected lyceums, associations and academies in¬ 
discriminately. Convalescence then began, since which the American 
body-scientific has enjoyed good health and has shown many periods of 
remarkable growth. 
