558 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
whom we honor tonight may, in her all-embracing scope, soar into the 
abstruser realms of mathematics and metaphysics, some of us biologists 
have a feeling that there is not much worth considering in this world that 
does not concern life upon it. 
Response on behalf of the Chemical Society was made by 
F. W. Clarke, and on behalf of the Entomological Society by 
W. H. Ashmead. 
Responding for the Joint Commission. Garrick Mallery read 
the following 
PHILOSOPHIC PHANTASY. 
All ante-bellum Washington was gay 
With duels, cock-fights, politics, and play, 
And ’twas the aim of all the residents 
To live on poker, punch, and Presidents. 
Their clubs were fitted for Kentucky colonels, 
Their reading limited to party journals. 
Little cared they for any kind of knowledge 
That didn’t count in the Electoral College. 
Then every Congressman thought he could boss over 
A fellow who was merely a philosopher, 
And if a man could write, was white, and thus a free gent, 
He was at once marked out to be Smithsonian Regent. 
Indeed, o’er all the earth in days gone by 
The tree of knowledge grew by no means high. 
Our easy grandsires in those happy eras 
Bothered no whit on fin de siecle chimeras. 
They knew all things when everything was new, 
Science was not and facts were very few. 
Those simple souls, yet smacking of the ape, 
From evolution’s toils had sure escape 
When any bard or scald a lay would tell 
Of Chronos, Odin, Ammon, Pthah, or Bel, 
And Huxley’s prose had proved of scanty use 
Fighting an ode to Artemis or Zeus! 
Thunder called not for meteoric lore, 
When Thor and Vulcan kept its bolts in store. 
What need of tomes on earthquake’s awesome shocks 
If Titans’ kicks explained the tumbling rocks ? 
Nature’s vast problems answered each itself 
Through monad, pixy, undine, gnome, or elf, 
And solved complete was every portent odd 
By new editions of the storied god. 
E’en at the worst the bard could turn his strain 
To Delphic strophe or Sibylline refrain 
