ocured from the Lockport quarries. The great
density and uniformity of the structure of the stone, and the facility
with which such large masses as are required for this purpose can be
procured there, have induced the selection of these quarries. The stones
will weigh from six and a half to eight tons each.

The main building was erected from the drawings of Messrs. Woollett and
Ogden, Architects, Albany; the additions and the machinery have been
designed by Mr. W. Hodgins, Civil Engineer; and the latter is now being
constructed under his superintendence, in a very superior manner, at the
iron works of Messrs. Pruyn and Lansing, Albany.

The entire building is a tasteful and elegant structure, much superior
in architectural character to any other in America devoted to a similar
purpose.

ORATION.

FELLOW CITIZENS OF ALBANY:--

Assembled as we are, under your auspices, in this ancient and hospitable
city, for an object indicative of a highly-advanced stage of scientific
culture, it is natural, in the first place, to cast a historical glance
at the past. It seems almost to surpass belief, though an unquestioned
fact, that more than a century should have passed away, after Cabot had
discovered the coast of North America for England, before any knowledge
was gained of the noble river on which your city stands, and which was
destined by Providence to determine, in after times, the position of the
commercial metropolis of the Continent. It is true that Verazzano, a
bold and sagacious Florentine navigator, in the service of France, had
entered the Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river,
deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to the sea;
but though he, like all the naval adventurers of that age, was sailing
westward in search of a shorter passage to India, he left this part of
the coast without any attempt to ascend the river; nor can it be
gathered from his narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into
the interior.

VOYAGE OF HENDRICK HUDSON.

Near a hundred years elapsed before that great thought acquired
substance and form. In the spring of 1609, the heroic but unfortunate
Hudson, one of the brightest names in the history of English maritime
adventure, but then in the employment of the Dutch East India Company,
in a vessel of eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the
_Half Moon_, having been sto