THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
N 
LaDIES AND GENTLEMEN: 
It is my pleasurable privilege to greet you with words of 
welcome on this auspicious occasion, and I am with you in 
spirit, though in person far from the scene of your gathering 
in the interest of that delightful pursuit to which many of the 
best years of my life have been devoted. I fondly hoped 
and fully intended to preside over your deliberations; but 
the fates willed otherwise, and imposed a seemingly capri- 
cious migration westward to the shores of the Pacific, at the 
time I would have remained in the city by the inland sea, 
could I have consulted my own desire. But distance debars 
me not from cherishing the wish to say a few words you may 
be glad to hear on the USE AND BEAUTY OF BIRDS. 
Birds are not less useful than beautiful. It is said that 
beauty is its own excuse for being; it is said that a thing of 
beauty is a joy forever ; it may be said that birds add to their 
other charms the beauty of utility. One use of beauty is to 
stimulate and gratify our esthetic sense; perception of the 
beautiful is an end in itself, for it strengthens and develops 
some of our highest faculties, some of our finest feelings. 
One use of birds subserves this noble purpose; but other 
uses are theirs, of the sort to satisfy the most practical util- 
itarian, devoid though he be of all appreciation of abstract 
beauty. For I venture to assert, and hope to be able to 
show, that the degree of civilization which the human race 
has reached would have been difficult if not impossible with- 
out the assistance of our feathered friends. 
As we all know, the natural man was a wild beast in the 
beginning, not a little lower than the angels, and not much 
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