YALE ALUMNI WHEKLY
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———.
PROFESSOR MARSH'S ADDRESS.
Informal Remarks at the Yale
Alumni Dinner in New York.
Mr. President and Gentlemen:
I thank you very much for your
invitation to attend this banquet, and
for the cordial welcome you have all
given me, but I am sure you will
expect only a few words from me. I
recognize fully that this evening is
given over to hero-worship, and that
we are here to do honor to the victors
in the forum of debate and on the foot-
ball field. They deserve all the honors
we can give them, and every Yale man
will join in their praise. On such an
occasion, it is not for those in the more
humble walks of life to claim your
attention, whether they represent lit-
erature, ait or science, bit as _your
chairman has so kindly referred to my
own work, I will at least say that, as a
loyal son of Yale, I have tried to do
my best for our Alma Mater, whenever
opportunity occurred. But, in Science,
as in all other kinds of work, there are
obstacles to be overcome and enemies
to conquer, Opponents with tongues
as sharp as those encountered in debate,
and others as dangerous as those met
on the football field, are always on
hand, and every man who tries to do
his duty, and honor his Alma Mater, is
sure to meet such adversaries.
In my Western work, twenty-five
years ago, there were plenty of difficul-
ties to overcome and hardships to be
endured. I do not allude to such tri-
fling things as alkaline water for a daily
beverage, an occasional Junch of mule
meat, or constant danger from hostile
Indians, for all these things were then
expected by Western explorers. Vari-
ous other enemies soon anveared, and
the civilized ones were more bitter and
persistent than the savages themselves.
FRIENDS AND FOES IN SCIENCE.
One thing, however, I hardly looked
for, and in this quiet family circle of
Yale men I may safely mention it.
One Yale man, a brilliant semi-class-
mate of mine, known to you all, was
in the West before me, and as the Gov-
ernment had placed him in charge of
the public domain, he magnified his
office and soon thought he owned the
whole Rocky Mountains. When I got
there and tried to dig out the pre-
Adamite man and the horses he rode,
my friend objected in a quiet way, but
that did not discourage me. As I
pushed the work on year after year, he
finally made what he called a protest
in behalf of science; but, in my private
opinion, it was only an indication of per-
sonal jealousy, for in College we were
rivals in trout fishing, and one April
Fast Day I beat him. The scientific
charge he brought against me was an
important one. He said I had taken
hundreds of tons of fossils from the top
of the Rocky Mountains, one or two
miles high, and shipped them down to
New Haven, at the sea level, and this,
he said, might shift the center of grav-
ity of the earth, change its axis of rota-
tion, and throw the whole thing out of
gear. A most serious charge, if true.
I am happy to say, however, that up to
date Mother Earth has not gone back
on Mother Yale. :
Astronomers tell us that the axis of
the earth has indeed wobbled a little
during the past few years, and we have
heard of cold chills passing through
Eastern Massachusetts, where our dear-
est foes are domiciled; and there have
also been plenty of shakes in New Jer-
sey, where Edwards (a Yale football
man, if I remember rightly)— |
‘* Mighty Edwards stamped his iron heel ;”’
but in Connecticut all remained quiet
and serene, and Yale is still doing busi-
ness at the old stand.
INDIAN SKULLS IN YALE MUSEUM.
Another sarcasm cast upon me and
my work by that same witty semi-class-
mate of mine was even more serious,
because it pertained not to this world,
but to the next. I had long been
greatly interested in the question of the
origin of the American Indian, as no
one knew where he came from or what
he is. I thought to solve the problem
by getting together the skulls of every
tribe of North American Indians, about
fifty of each, so as to eliminate the
variations of age, sex and previous
condition. Also those from Alaska,
the Aleutian Islands, Japan, China, and
the Sandwich Islands, and by compar-
ing them all together, to try to find out
what the native American really was
and where he came from. This whole-
sale plan of collecting skulls and send-
ing them to Yale, did not please either
my friends or foes.
A lot of good old women of both
sexes in a neighboring city were after
me for this skull business. They did
not hear of it, of course, until some
-time after it occurred, but when they
did wake up, they made a direct charge
against me, namely, “desecrating In-
dian graves in the interest of science,
falsely so-called.” This charge was
untrue, as I had not touched a single
Indian grave. I did not have to, as the
Western Indians leave their departed
friends in trees or on platforms, where
the coyotes cannot get at them. The
same band of professional philanthro-
pists even accused me of wishing to put
in my collection the skulls of some of
my Caucasian foes, when all I really
cared for was their scalps.
I was afraid that there would be fur-
ther trouble in this same business from
my semi-classmate, for he came near
giving the whole thing away in a maga-
zine article, and it was reported that
he himself had even stolen the skull of
a king of the Cannibal Islands right out
of the royal tomb. I did not see him
take the skull, but I did see him after-
wards talking to the queen of the same
islands, and I know positively that he
refused to give that skull to the Yale
Museum, because I asked him myself.
So, as my collection of the skulls of
native Americans and their neighbors
rapidly increased at Yale, I knew this
classmate would be heard from, and he
was. He merely remarked, however,
that when the final day of judgment
came, the Angel Gabriel, if he knew
his business, would come straight to
New Haven and give his first blast
there, to save time.
RECENT GIET.TO. VALE.
Such were some of the discourage-
ments I encountered long ago in the
“bone business,’ as my first guide, the
famous Buffalo Bill, used to call it.
When all my collections were together
at Yale, another question of still great-
er importance came up, and that was
what to do with them, cspecially in case
of my death. I, of course, could not
take them with me, for if I did, they
would probably burn up, as some of
our clerical friends believe, and there-
fore the disposition of them was a seri-
ous matter. As I had no time to settle
this theological question, I thought it
safer on the whole to leave my fossil
treasures in a fire-proof building in New
Haven, much as I disliked to part with
them. This I have done; and on the
first day of January last I presented
them all to Yale.
‘Another reason, and the main one,
for giving them to my Alma Mater
now, was that I hoped by this gift, and
the fact that about three-fourths of the
specimens are now stored where they
are of little service to the public or to
Yale, that some generous friend of the
University or of science would give the
small sum necessary to complete the
main museum building, so that the
whole could be ready for our bi-centen-
tennial celebration in 1901. How exten-
sive the collections are, I cannot now
stop to tell you, except that they will
fill the new building we are hoping for.
They represent thirty years’ work, and
nearly all my patrimony. We ought
to have had this building long ago, but
one trouble with Yale is that she hides
her light under a bushel, reposing upon
her well-earned dignity, while the old
fresh-water colleges, as Holmes called
them, and the new brass-band institu-
tions, as the students term them, rush
in for the plums that lie by the way-
side or drop from above.
WHY YALE JS: POG.
Another reason why Yale gets so
little money is mainly theological.
She is not quite good enough to secure
the saints, nor quite wicked enough to
catch the sinners. Princeton gets the
first and Harvard the second, while
Yale is left between the upper and
nether millstones, and therefore must
depend mainly upon her own graduates.
When the extent and value of my
scientific collections at Yale became
known, especially in Europe, the facts
were not always received kindly by
other institutions in this country.
What some of our dearest foes of the
Unitarian faith said in stage whispers,
and some of our bitterest friends (as
the students say) of the Presbyterian
persuasion uttered openly, about the
large collections going to New Haven,
I should not dare to repeat -before this
refined audience. What some of them
are now saying since these collections
became the property of Yale, the
Recording Angel alone has an accurate
record, and this, in the interest of peace
on earth and good will to men, he very
properly withholds from mortals—at
least for the present.
How I feel about all this, you can
imagine, but I shall not attempt to do
justice to the subject here. I really
could not do it. If I were out West,
it would be different, but long ago,
wishing to set a proper example to the
undergraduates, as every professor
should, I made a solemn vow never to
use any profanity east of the Missouri
River. I hope, therefore, that you will
excuse me if I say no more, for really
I could not free. my mind with my
limited New England vocabulary.
Considering all these drawbacks to my
life work, I hope the friends of Yale
will now come forward and complete
the museum building in time for our
bi-centennial celebration in 1901.
Bi A Roe
‘¢ Scientific Monthly” Contents.
The February number of the Sci-
entific Monthly appeared Friday, Febru-
ary 18. The contents are as follows:
“On Decomposition,’ by W. J. Gies;
“Pump Irrigation in the West,” by
Hunter Morrison, ’99S.; “Count Rum-
ford, By = Ws Walkeés, “og Si; = “fhe
Future of Our Forests,’ by H. S.
Canby, ’09S.; “Modern Telephone In-
struments;’:-by F.'G, dally Jr. ‘99 5.;
“St. Anthony Falls Power Plant,’ by
E. N. Saunders, 99 S. There are also
the usual departments of book notices,
alumni and editors’ notes, together with
a digest of the Freshman physics.
)DRESS ronone 2¢ STAMP
MBIA DEALER.
:
Be:
B
3
Athletic Calendar.
March 12.—Annual indoor games, —
Second Regiment Armory, New Haven.
March 23.—Annual Spring games,
open to Yale men, at Yale Field.
March 30.—Invitation games, at Yale
Field.
May 14.—Dual Yale-Harvard track
games, at Cambridge.
May 27 and _ 28.—Intercollegiate
games, New York.
June 23.—Yale-Harvard baseball at
Cambridge.
June 28.—Yale-Harvard baseball at
New Haven.
July 2—Yale-Harvard baseball at
New York, if necessary in case of a tie.
FRADE MAR K
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