Part 2

He next proceeded to show that organized beings were organized with reference to a plan, which the relations between different animals, and between different plants, and between animals and plants, everywhere exhibit;--drew sections of the body of a fish, and of the bird, and of man, and pointed out that in each there was the same central back-bone, the cavity above and the ribbed cavity below the flesh on each side, and the skin over all--showing that the maker of each possessed the same thought--followed the same plan of structure. And upon that plan He had made all the kinds of quadrupeds, 2,000 in number, all the kinds of birds, 7,000 in number, all of the reptiles, 2,000 to 3,000 in number, all the fish, 10,000 to 12,000 in number. All their forms may be derived as different expressions of the same formula. There are only four of these great types; or, said he, may I not call them the four tunes on which Divinity has played the harmonies that have peopled, in living and beautiful reality, the whole world?

PROFESSOR HITCHCOCK ON REMINISCENCES.

ERASTUS C. BENEDICT, Esq. of New York, introduced Prof. HITCHCOCK, of Amherst, as a gentleman whose name was very familiar, who had laid aside, voluntarily, the charge of one of the largest colleges in New England, but who could never lay aside the honors he had earned in the literature and science of geology.

After a few introductory observations, Prof. HITCHCOCK said:--

This, I believe, is the first example in which a State Government in our country has erected a museum for the exhibition of its natural resources, its mineral and rock, its plants and animals, living and fossil. And this seems to me the most appropriate spot in the country for placing the first geological hall erected by the Government; for the County of Albany was the district where the first geological survey was undertaken, on this side of the Atlantic, and, perhaps, the world. This was in 1820, and ordered by that eminent philanthropist, Stephen Van Rensselaer, who, three years later, appointed Prof. Eaton to survey, in like manner, the whole region traversed by the Erie Canal. This was the commencement of a work, which, during the last thirty years, has had a wonderful expansion, reaching a large part of the States of the Union, as well as Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and, I might add, several European countries, where the magnificent surveys now in progress did not commence till after the survey of Albany and Rensselaer Counties. How glad are we, therefore, to find on this spot the first Museum of Economical Geology on this side of the Atlantic! Nay, embracing as it does all the department of Natural History, I see in it more than a European Museum of Economical Geology, splendid though they are. I fancy, rather, that I see here the germ of a Cis-Atlantic British Museum, or Garden of Plants.

North Carolina was the first State that ordered a geological survey; and I have the pleasure of seeing before me the gentleman who executed it, and in 1824-5 published a report of 140 pages. I refer to Professor Olmstead, who, though he has since won brighter laurels in another department of science, will always be honored as the first commissioned State geologist in our land.

Of the New York State Survey he said:--

This survey has developed the older fossiliferous rocks, with a fullness and distinctness unknown elsewhere. Hence European savans study the New York Reports with eagerness. In 1850, as I entered the Woodwardian Museum, in the University of Cambridge, in England, I found Professor McCoy busy with a collection of Silurian fossils before him, which he was studying with Hall's first volume of Paleontology as his guide; and in the splendid volumes, entitled British Paleozoric Rocks and Fossils, which appeared last year as the result of those researches, I find Professor Hall denominated the great American Paleontologist. I tell you, Sir, that this survey has given New York a reputation throughout the learned world, of which she may well be proud. Am I told that it will, probably, cost half a million? Very well. The larger the sum, the higher will be the reputation of New York for liberality; and what other half million expended in our country, has developed so many new facts or thrown so much light upon the history of the globe, or won so world-wide and enviable a reputation?

And of Geological Surveys in general:--

In regard to this matter of geological surveys, I can hardly avoid making a suggestion here. So large a portion of our country has now been examined, more or less thoroughly, by the several State governments, that it does seem to me the time has come when the National government should order a survey--geological, zoological, and botanical--of the whole country, on such a liberal and thorough plan as the surveys in Great Britain are now conducted; in the latter country it being understood that at least thirty years will be occupied in the work. Could not the distinguished New York statesman who was to have addressed us to-day be induced, when the present great struggle in which he is engaged shall have been brought to a close, by a merciful Providence, to introduce this subject, and urge it upon Congress? And would it not be appropriate for the American Association for the Advancement of Science to throw a petition before the government for such an object? Or might it not, with the consent of the eminent gentleman who has charge of the Coast Survey, be connected therewith, as it is with the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain.

The history of the American Association was then given:--

Prof. Mather, I believe, through Prof. Emmons, first suggested to the New-York Board of Geologists in November, 1838, in a letter proposing a number of points for their consideration. I quote from him the following paragraph relating to the meeting. As to the credit he has here given me of having personally suggested the subject, I can say only that I had been in the habit for several years of making this meeting of scientific men a sort of hobby in my correspondence with such. Whether others did the same, I did not then, and do not now know. Were this the proper place, I could go more into detail on this point; but I will merely quote Prof. Mather's language to the Board:--

* * * * "Would it not be well to suggest the propriety of a meeting of Geologists and other scientific men of our country at some central point next fall,--say at New-York or Philadelphia? There are many questions in our Geology that will receive new light from friendly discussion and the combined observations of various individuals who have noted them in different parts of our country. Such a meeting has been suggested by Prof. Hitchcock; and to me it seems desirable. It would undoubtedly be an advantage not only to science but to the several surveys that are now in progress and that may in future be authorized. It would tend to make known our scientific men to each other personally, give them more confidence in each other, and cause them to concentrate their observation on those questions that are of interest in either a scientific or economical point of view. More questions may be satisfactorily settled in a day by oral discussion in such a body, than a year by writing and publication."

Though the Board adopted the plan of a meeting, various causes delayed the first over till April, 1840, when we assembled in Philadelphia, and spent a week in most profitable and pleasant discussion, and the presentation of papers. Our number that year was only 18, because confined almost exclusively to the State geologists; but the next year, when we met again in Philadelphia, and a more extended invitation was given, about eighty were present; and the members have been increasing to the present time. But, in fact, those first two meetings proved the type, in all things essential, of all that have followed. The principal changes have been those of expansion and the consequent introduction of many other branches of science with their eminent cultivators. In 1842, we changed the name to that of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists; and in 1847, to that of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I trust it has not yet reached its fullest development, as our country and its scientific men multiply, and new fields of discovery open.

Prof. H. said of this particular occasion:--

We may be quite sure that this Hall will be a center of deep interest to coming generations. Long after we shall have passed away will the men of New-York, as they survey these monuments, feel stimulated to engage in other noble enterprises by this work of their progenitors, and from many a distant part of the civilized world will men come here to solve their scientific questions, and to bring far-off regions into comparison with this. New-York, then, by her liberal patronage, has not only acquired an honorable name among those living in all civilized lands, but has secured the voice of History to transmit her fame to far-off generations.

SIR WILLIAM LOGAN ASKS "THE WAY TO ALBANY."

Sir WILLIAM E. LOGAN, of Canada, in a brief speech acknowledged the services rendered by the New-York Survey to Canada. He should manifest ingratitude if he declined to unite in the joyful occasion of inaugurating the Museum which was to hold forever the evidence of the truth of its published results. The Survey of Canada had been ordered, and the Commission of five years twice renewed; and the last time, the provision for it was more than doubled. It happened to him, as Mr. Agassiz had said: after crossing the ocean first, the first thing he asked was, "Which is the way to Albany?" and when he arrived here, he found that with the aid of Prof. Hall's discoveries, he had only to take up the different formations as he had left them on the boundary line, and follow them into Canada. It was both a convenience and a necessity to adopt the New-York nomenclature, which was thus extended over an area six times as large as New-York. In Paris he heard De Vernier using the words Trenton and Niagara, as if they were household words. He was delighted to witness the impatience with which Barron inquired when the remaining volumes of the Paleontology of New-York would be published. Your Paleontological reputation, said he, has made New-York known, even among men not scientific, all over Europe. I hope you will not stop here, but will go on and give us in equally thorough, full, and magnificent style, the character of the Durassic and Cretaceous formations.

PROFESSOR HENRY ON DUTCHMEN.

Professor HENRY was at a loss to know by what process they had arrived at the conclusion that seven men of science must be substituted to fill the place of one distinguished statesman whom they had expected to hear. He prided himself on his Albany nativity. He was proud of the old Dutch character, that was the substratum of the city. The Dutch are hard to be moved, but when they do start their momentum is not as other men's in proportion to the velocity, but as the square of the velocity. So when the Dutchman goes three times as fast, he has nine times the force of another man. The Dutchman has an immense potentia agency, but it wants a small spark of Yankee enterprise to touch it off. In this strain the Professor continued, making his audience very merry, and giving them a fine chance to express themselves with repeated explosions of laughter.

PROFESSOR DAVIES ON THE PRACTICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE.

Prof. CHARLES DAVIES was introduced by EX-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, and spoke briefly, but humorously and very much to the point, in defense of the practical character of scientific researches. He said that to one accustomed to speak only on the abstract quantities of number and space, this was an unusual occasion, and this an unusual audience; and inquired how he could discuss the abstract forms of geometry, when he saw before him, in such profusion, the most beautiful real forms that Providence has vouchsafed to the life of man. He proposed to introduce and develop but a single train of thought--the unchangeable connection between what in common language is called the theoretical and practical, but in more technical phraseology, the ideal and the actual. The actual, or true practical, consists in the uses of the forces of nature, according to the laws of nature; and here we must distinguish between it and the empirical, which uses, or attempts to use, those forces, without a knowledge of the laws. The true practical, therefore, is the result, or actual, of an antecedent ideal. The ideal, full and complete, must exist in the mind before the actual can be brought forth according to the laws of science. Who, then, are the truly practical men of our age? Are they not those who are engaged most laboriously and successfully in investigating the great laws? Are they not those who are pressing out the boundaries of knowledge, and conducting the mind into new and unexplored regions, where there may yet be discovered a California of undeveloped thought? Is not the gentleman from Massachusetts (Professor Agassiz) the most practical man in our country in the department of Natural History, not because he has collected the greatest number of specimens, but because he has laid open to us all the laws of the animal kingdom? Are the formulas written on the black-board by the gentleman from Cambridge (Prof. Pierce) of no practical value, because they cannot be read by the uninstructed eye? A single line may contain the elements of the motions of all the heavenly bodies; and the eye of science, taking its stand-point at the center of gravity of the system, will see in the equation the harmonious revolutions of all the bodies which circle the heavens. It is such labors and such generalizations that have rendered his name illustrious in the history of mathematical science. Is it of no practical value that the Chief of the Coast Survey (Prof. Bache), by a few characters written upon paper, at Washington, has determined the exact time of high and low tide in the harbor of Boston, and can determine, by a similar process, the exact times of high and low water at every point on the surface of the globe? Are not these results, the highest efforts of science, also of the greatest practical utility? And may we not, then, conclude that there is nothing truly practical which is not the consequence of an antecedent ideal?

Science is to art what the great fly-wheel and governor of a steam-engine are to the working part of the machinery--it guides, regulates, and controls the whole. Science and art are inseparably connected; like the Siamese Twins, they cannot be separated without producing the death of both.

How, then, are we to regard the superb specimens of natural history, which the liberality, the munificence; and the wisdom of our State have collected at the Capitol? They are the elements from which we can here determine all that belongs to the Natural History of our State; and may we not indulge the hope, that science and genius will come here, and, striking them with a magic wand, cause the true practical to spring into immortal life?

Remarks were also uttered by Prof. CHESTER DEWEY, President ANDERSON, and Rev. Dr. COX.

And thus ended the Inauguration of the State Geological Hall.

We turn to the Observatory, in regular order of succession.

INAUGURATION OF DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.