286 



Louis Agassiz. 



I have appeared before you as the representative 

 of the Boston Natural History Society. It was 

 their proposition to celebrate this memorable anni- 

 versary. I feel grateful for their invitation, for the 

 honour they have done me. I feel still more grateful 

 for the generous impulse which has prompted them 

 to connect a Humboldt Scholarship, as a memorial 

 of this occasion, with the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology at Cambridge.'' 



Thus, Mr. President and gentlemen, while we 

 cannot but deeply mourn the vast loss which this 

 community and the whole country has sustained by 

 this bereavement, we rejoice in that friendly rela- 

 tionship which so long existed between us, and are 

 thankful that one of the last great public utterances 

 of his life was given under the auspices of this 

 Society. 



And now that his life, so beneficently crowded . 

 with activity and usefulness, has closed to us in this 

 sphere of being, we are grateful that our mutual 

 efforts established what will not only be a perpetual 

 bond of union between this Society and the institu- 

 tion of which he was the honoured head, but which, 

 we trust, through successive years may prove a 

 source of practical help and encouragement to num- 

 berless students, who, by their future efforts, may 

 extend the boundaries of knowledge, thus aiding in 

 the work of human progress, while they carry for- 

 ward to yet further completion those investigations 

 and discoveries which, in our own day, have given 

 immortality to the names of Humboldt and Agassiz, 



