Proceedings of the Academy. 
693 
First Session, 11:00 A. M. 
Auditorium, Biology Building, University of Wisconsin. 
This session was a combined meeting of the Academy and a 
University Convocation, presided over by Edward A. Birge, in 
his combined capacity as the President of the Academy and 
President of the University of Wisconsin. The object of the ses¬ 
sion was to hear an address by Professor Thomas Chrowder 
Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago, formerly President 
of the University of Wisconsin, President of the Wisconsin Acad¬ 
emy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 1885-1887, and one of its 
original incorporators; and to confer upon him the Degree Doc¬ 
tor of Science. 
Professor Chamberlin was introduced to the session and de¬ 
livered the following address: 
THE FOUNDING OF THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 
ARTS, AND LETTERS 
The event we are met to commemorate was a quiet one in itself. 
It took place without noise or pagentry. But none the less, in the 
intellectual history of the people of this commonwealth, it was a sig¬ 
nal event. The founding of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts 
and Letters, tho quite without the paraphernalia of a great event, 
was yet a most distinctive step in the passage from the first stage in 
the intellectual evolution of our people into this, the second stage. 
The first stage, it is needless to say, was that of pioneer develop¬ 
ment. It began with the coming of our forefathers into this goodly 
land between the Great Lake and the Great River. The territory was 
then in its virgin state, tenanted by the wild life that had taken pos¬ 
session of it on the retreat of the Great Ice Invasion. This first stage 
was a period of pioneer struggle and this struggle almost necessarily 
delayed certain forms of scientific and cultural development. This 
pioneer stage continued not only until the virgin prairies, the wild 
meadows, the park-like groves, and the trackless forests of Wiscon¬ 
sin had been replaced by cultivated fields, comfortable dwellings and 
prosperous towns, but until all these had been bound together by a 
net-work of roadways and railways that united the whole into an in¬ 
tercommunicating cooperative community ready to enter upon a com¬ 
mon organized career in pursuit of its higher interests. 
The second stage could really begin only when the conditions were 
thus ripe for unified efforts to develop the higher intellectual, ethical 
and aesthetic interests of the community. I think you will agree with 
me that no step toward this higher evolution could be more fun da- 
