222 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
remonstrance against his resignation, as to induce him not only to 
withdraw it, hut to feel that henceforth what had been regarded as 
a burden would be a joy, that the performance of the duties of his 
office would be sweetened as never before by the recognition that 
the respect and regard which he felt towards all the members were 
fully reciprocated by them.” In 1880, on the completion of the 
fiftieth year of the Society he declined re-election. 
Two other great services of Mr Bouv4 remain to be spoken of. 
In 1861, he was appointed upon the committee to prepare the plans 
for this building, and to raise by subscription the funds necessary for 
its erection. To this work he gave untiring devotion until its com¬ 
pletion and dedication, a period of three years. None but those 
who served with him upon this committee can appreciate how much 
of the lives of its members were budded into this structure, and the 
large share in its consummation the Society owes to his energy, 
perseverance, and persuasive power — such labors are rarely bestowed 
for price. 
In 1880, when the Society had completed the first half century of 
its existence, Mr. Bouve was requested to prepare a history of it 
from its beginning. In one sense this was an improper selection, for 
could a man of his great modesty truthfully narrate the doings and 
deserts of those who had built it up from small things to its present 
eminent position, and be expected to tell a tenth part of what the 
most zealous and persistent of them all had done for it every day of 
his forty years service ? But no historian could have been chosen 
who knew so intimately every incident of its story, and had been so 
essential a part of its being in every phase of its career, or done so 
much to shape the course he was asked to depict. And what an 
interesting narration he made of it, from the days of small events, 
when the presentation of a single specimen was made much of, to 
the recording of such magnificent gifts as the La Fresnaye Collection 
of birds by Dr. Bryant, and the repeated donations of great sums of 
money by Dr. Walker. The work of all his associates received 
generous and appreciative recognition, his own was barely men¬ 
tioned, his name ever the last in the list where it should have been 
the first. Our successors should be taught to read between his lines 
in justice to his memory. 
Of the merits of the scientific work he accomplished in and outside 
this Society, the communications presented, the specimens described, 
the collections arranged, I should be no fit judge or recorder. This 
