with
appropriate ceremonies dedicated it to the increase of our knowledge of
the heavenly bodies.

The president of your university has done me the honor of inviting me
to supplement what was said on that occasion by some remarks of a more
general nature suggested by the celebration. One is naturally disposed
to say first what is uppermost in his mind. At the present moment this
will naturally be the general impression made by what has been seen and
heard. The ceremonies were attended, not only by a remarkable
delegation of citizens, but by a number of visiting astronomers which
seems large when we consider that the profession itself is not at all
numerous in any country. As one of these, your guests, I am sure that I
give expression only to their unanimous sentiment in saying that we
have been extremely gratified in many ways by all that we have seen and
heard. The mere fact of so munificent a gift to science cannot but
excite universal admiration. We knew well enough that it was nothing
more than might have been expected from the public spirit of this great
West; but the first view of a towering snowpeak is none the less
impressive because you have learned in your geography how many feet
high it is, and great acts are none the less admirable because they
correspond to what you have heard and read, and might therefore be led
to expect.

The next gratifying feature is the great public interest excited by the
occasion. That the opening of a purely scientific institution should
have led so large an assemblage of citizens to devote an entire day,
including a long journey by rail, to the celebration of yesterday is
something most suggestive from its unfamiliarity. A great many
scientific establishments have been inaugurated during the last
half-century, but if on any such occasion so large a body of citizens
has gone so great a distance to take part in the inauguration, the fact
has at the moment escaped my mind.

That the interest thus shown is not confined to the hundreds of
attendants, but must be shared by your great public, is shown by the
unfailing barometer of journalism. Here we have a field in which the
non-survival of the unfit is the rule in its most ruthless form. The
journals that we see and read are merely the fortunate few of a
countless number, dead and forgotten, that did not know what the public
wanted to read about. The eagerness shown by the representatives of
your press in recording everything your