562 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
Responding to the toast Auld Lang Syne , W. H. Dall said 
that— 
In common with most of the older members of the Society, he had felt 
that its greatest value and usefulness to its members, especially the younger 
men, arose not so much from the papers bearing on his own special lines 
of study, important and suggestive as they may have been, as from the 
opportunities which the meetings have afforded of becoming acquainted 
with the results of research in other lines. Though not a mathematician 
or physicist, yet few, even of the most abstruse, papers but had afforded 
some new and welcome additions to his stock of knowledge, some broaden¬ 
ing of mental boundaries, some enlargement of the intellectual horizon. 
So, too, he had profited by that contact with the riper minds and wider 
experience which the older and more eminent founders of the Society 
had brought to its deliberations, and which had been so justly alluded to 
by Professor Harkness. In recalling the memory of those whom all scien¬ 
tific men delighted to honor, such men as Henry, Dr. Woodward, and 
many others whose names would occur to every member, he felt a sense 
of personal obligation for the kindly and wise interest which those emi¬ 
nent men always showed in the work of the younger members. He re¬ 
called his last interview with Professor Plenry—had when the speaker 
was on the point of sailing for Europe, and the good old man was already 
confined to the room which he never left again. The benediction which 
he received from that Nestor in science in parting had always been re¬ 
membered as in the nature of a consecration to honesty, persistence, and 
thoroughness in scientific work. 
The speaker recalled also the deep interest felt by Professor Henry in 
the work of the Society and the method by which he succeeded in bring¬ 
ing to its meetings many workers, not members, who described their 
progress in lines of research of the highest importance, at times when 
the results of these investigations were still unknown to the scientific 
world. One especially notable occasion should not at this time be for¬ 
gotten. Called by Professor Henry to assist in advance of the meeting 
in arranging the apparatus of a gentleman then unknown outside the 
circle of his friends, but now familiar to every cultivated person in both 
hemispheres, he witnessed the arrangement of wires from one room to 
another in the old Medical Museum, and after the paper had been deliv¬ 
ered the members were invited to leave their seats and listen at an orifice 
provided in a box placed on the President’s table. As one by one made 
the experiment some thought that they could distinguish spoken words, 
though, personally, the speaker confessed that all he distinguished was 
a faint tinkling as of wires in vibration. Yet this was the first public 
exhibition of the speaking telephone, since so marvelously perfected and 
distributed over the civilized world; this was the humble seed from 
which so mighty a tree had sprung. If the Society had never done any¬ 
thing else to deserve distinction, the record of this incident alone would 
never let its memory die. 
Adjourned at 12 o’clock. 
