240 
CALVIN PORTRAIT 
sets up permanent landmarks, and rears to himself in the realm of men¬ 
tality lasting monuments. 
Iowa seeks to note and to preserve the proofs of such of her noblest 
lives. Something it is she does, but all too seldom and too imperfectly. 
But in this service of your Academy of Science amends, in part, are 
made. 
In the domains of science, unlike in some other fields, men rise to 
great distinction, expand, achieve, and yet impinge on none. They tower 
above without obscuring those with whom they stand. They expand 
without crowding or absorbing others in their expansion. They achieve 
as brother fellows in achievement. They initiate, they stimulate, they 
direct; they do not subtract, nor repress, nor deflect force. Samuel 
Calvin was such a man. He saw early and with clearness. He wrought 
with certainty and with prodigious dilligence. He went afar, and ex¬ 
panded always. He achieved at the expense of no other man’s achieve¬ 
ments. He found' a world that was made larger by the extent of his ex¬ 
pansion. 
In leaving behind him such a memory such a man leaves also oppor¬ 
tunity for the succeeding generation to do honor to itself in honoring 
him. In your endeavor to affix his lineaments for posterity you make high¬ 
est effort men can make to transmit to those who shall ever be his 
beneficiaries some token of his appearance in life. And in that long fu¬ 
ture throughout which men shall use his thought and be blessed by his 
accomplishment they will pay their respects to this work of art as they 
do to his works of science. 
Clothed with the custodianship of such priceless treasures of the State 
of Iowa it is mine to thank the Academy, mine to accept the custody, 
and mine to pledge the people of the State to its propriate care and 
disposition; mine to express to you a gratitude profound for the privi¬ 
lege of being associated in an enterprise so noble and so enduring as are 
the benefits which the public will have forever flowing from the great 
labors of this distinguished man. 
One regrettable incident entered into the otherwise felicitous 
exercises. Neither the geological department of the State Uni¬ 
versity of Iowa nor the Iowa Geological Survey, to which were 
devotedly given up long years and best efforts of Calvin’s life, 
were adequately represented, and the Survey had no represen¬ 
tation at all. Such oversight passeth all understanding. The 
gaucherie was widely observed and by not a few freely com¬ 
mented upon. 
