his own gift, — he knows how much better and more delightful it is to 

 give than to receive, — and so I stand here for a moment on behalf 

 of my fellow trustees, to receive this splendid donation. 



"If this were Mr. Jesup's only gift to the Museum, it ought to place 

 him among the immortals. To place in our vestibule, at the entrance 

 of these halls of science, the busts of these great pioneers and masters, 

 to place them here so that the future generations of New York and of 

 America may become familiar with their features would be in itself a 

 very great and valuable gift. Ever since the foundation of this Museum 

 thirty-seven years ago, he has been enriching and endowing it with 

 wonderful gifts. 



" Most of you are perfectly familiar with the chief of these, — the 

 Jesup Collection of Woods, containing the wood of every tree known 

 to be existing in North America, a perfectly unique collection which 

 cannot anywhere be repeated; the collections that were brought by the 

 Jesup North Pacific Expedition from the shores of British Columbia, 

 Alaska and Asia are also unique in their way; and in the Hall of Verte- 

 brate Palaeontology a large portion of that wonderful exhibit is from his 

 generous hands. Even now, today, he is fitting out for our benefit an 

 expedition for the exploration of fossils in northern Egypt, and I am sure 

 that when Professor Osborn, who is to head the expedition, returns next 

 spring, he will come 'bearing his sheaves with him,' in the form of the 

 fossil remains of the ancestral elephant, which he will find somewhere 

 between the mouth of the Nile and the Nubian Desert — exactly where 

 I cannot tell, but he, at this moment, with his prophetic vision could 

 put his finger upon the very spot. 



" This Museum, if you will notice the date, was born in the Dark 

 Ages of the City of New York — in 1869 — when the public enemy 

 was in possession of the city and of its treasury. It was a gloomy day 

 for the foundation of such an institution. I believe it was about that 

 time that one board of public officials, catching a strange ray of light 

 for that dark time, had employed the celebrated Dr. Hawkins to pre- 

 pare models of the vast fossil mammals for exhibition to the people. 

 They gave him a house in Central Park, where he set to work on that 

 great study. By and by, there came in another set of public officials 

 who were as antediluvian as the fossils themselves, and they broke his 

 models all up and sent the doctor on his way not rejoicing at all. 



" We never dared in those days to hope or expect help from the 



