Our Retrospect. 



115 



L. Pruyn, late Chancellor of the State, and, as the change into 

 departments has meanwhile been made for better facility in work, 

 there are more officers than before. Among them we read still 

 the names of Richard Varick DeWitt and Peter Gansevoort, but all 

 else are changed. Now appear Doctors Mosher, Vandcrpoel and 

 Howard Townsend, Professors Hough, James Hall, Amos Dean and 

 C. H. Anthony, the celebrated printer Joel Munsell, Dr. John N. 

 Campbell and Judge Alexander S. Johnson. To many of us the In- 

 stitute now begins to wear a more familiar aspect, for we have person- 

 ally known these men, and naturally from that knowledge can better 

 appreciate their work. We can recall how indefatigable they were in 

 pushing on our objects, and can almost see them as they stood at the 

 end of the long table and read their contributions or joined in the dis- 

 cussions which were sure to follow. In our recollection they were all 

 men of mature life, who had made reputations in their several profes- 

 sions and naturally had acquired dignity and repose; but some of them 

 must have been young men when first appointed to office and were well 

 content to occupy medium positions in our government, if thereby 

 they might have the opportunity to assist the Institution with their 

 labors. Thenceforth and for many years those men with scarcely an 

 exceptiou continued to enrich the Transactions with their well-consid- 

 ered papers, — some of them young men, as I have said, or, at the most, 

 not more than middle aged. From these, however, stand out three or 

 four well-loved members, who even then had earned honorable gray 

 hairs and had begun to feel entitled to seek comparative repose, but 

 none the less have always shown themselves alert and active when the 

 interests of the Institute asked their attention. These are Pro! 

 James Hall, best known abroad of all New York State scientific men 

 as a Geologist of high attainment, who has often given prominence 

 and character to our volumes by contributions which no one else could 

 hope to equal in his chosen line of study, and still lives, further to 

 enrich our Transactions; William H. Bogart, the fluent speaker as well 

 as the ardent lover of olden memorials and associations, now no more, 

 but until the last, never failing to visit us whenever he could, and 

 *hen too feeble for that, still remembering us in his correspondence; 

 Dr. Henry A. Homes, the experienced Librarian, and known also as 

 the gifted student of Arabic lore; and, lastly, Orlando Meads, at 

 one time the oldest of our Institute in membership, our honored 

 President when he died, and who, in an anniversary address, so fully 

 occupied his subject with his correct memory of long-departed mem- 

 bers, that no one can attempt to cover a similar ground until succeed- 

 l *g generations shall have relegated to the past the story of later 



