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THE KING OF, MUSEUM-BUILDERS. (°)>, Go%

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f of -museum-builders is an party of the second part isa fool; but, at all

the greatest scientific events, after seven years of service with him,.
vm in the world is at beautiful
. fairly in the shadow of her

As patriotic Americans we have ~

to be wroud of Professor Ward

there are some. millions of

a

alone,and socompletely clothed in his own orig- — age

inality that I consider it worth while to tell

this story of him, and tell it now. Wer s
In this country, in England, Germany an ;

aye France there are other men who make a busi- —

ollars and cents. ness of gathering and distributing scientific”

aim well; and having quarreled with specimens for museums ; but this man towers —
ly in the ardent and aggressive above them all like a colossus standing on a

ith, I feel that can now judge plain. Where other men are able to supply
both his character and his thespétimens for one small department of a

e his story exactly asitis. me cientific museum, his vast establishment

ome that familiarity breeds con- 7 the éntire museum, from the lowest

rs that no man isa hero to depths of geology up to man himself, with

be so, especially when the every department reasonably complete, The

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148

WHE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS.

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A TYPICAL CoLcLEcTION,

whole of the Lewis Brooks Museum, of the
University of Virginia, except the building,
was taken bodily and at once out of the Roch-
ester establishment, and scarcely made a hole
in it !

When Marshall Field, of Chicago, gave his
check for $100,000 in exchange for the entire
Ward collection at the World's Fair, a whole
tuuseum was bought and ‘ located” in one
day,

Instead of being brought forth, as is cus-
tomary, with great labor and travail, and
working up in slow misery from nothing to
something, as do most new public museums,
the grand new Field Columbian Museum, like
the Lewis Brooks Museum, was born of full
stature, lusty and proud, christened and con-
firmed, allin one day. All this was made pos-
sible by one man—and I wonder how many
Chicagoans there are who know all the facts,
or remember his name.

In these days, the times require that every
man shall haye his special work, bounded,
limited and confined. In science, n0 man now
dares to attempt to know it all. He must spe-
cialize within the fence that bounds his par-
ticular bailiwick—the ethnologist on man, the
mammalogist on mammals, the ornithologist on
birds, the herpetologist on reptiles, and so forth
and so on, ad infinitum, each after hisown kind.
Every professional naturalist is supposed to be
either a teacher or an investigator, and to

know literally all there is to be known 2%;
his one poor little specialty,

Know that Professor Ward belongs to neithe.
of those classes of naturalists, With a fins
scientific education, the inborn habit of inves-
tigation, and a command of language—or I
had better say languages—-of which any teacher
might well be proud, he elected to carve out for
himself a special niche i the world and §l <+
all alone.

He deliberately chose as his aphere, of use
fulness the gathering and distributing of anon
cimens and collections for the promotion of
scientific study. The work of his life kas been
to place in the hands of ey, entific sti
dent and investigator the cts that he can
not obtain for himself; and which dull men
canuot obtain for him. His life work begagy
in carrying an old trunk filled with fossils frong
the Paris Basin, across the English Channel, an
selling its contents to the London museums for
a good round sum. Now, however, it requires
twenty-one freight cars, jammed to the roof,
to transport such a collection as that which
constituted the ‘‘ Ward Exhibit” at the World’s
Fair of glorious memory.

In this hurrying, hustling age, nothing ap-
peals to the mind of the busy reader more
sharply than figures. We haya almost reached
the point when no description #5 quite con:
plete, and no object is considered fully *‘*sizer
up” without them. Adjectives are compar;

THE KING OF MUSEUM-RBU/LD

tive, figures are absolute, From the cradle to
the graye. the true American will have his
nine digits, and at this point nothing else can
‘ garye my purpose quite so well.

Ihave before me a list, closely printed, ex-
_acily the Jength of my arm, of one hundred
American museums, to each of which Profes:
gor Ward has supplied collections. It isa roll
_ of honor well worthy of being carved, figures
and all, on hismonument, In reality, it is a
complete list of all the scientific museums in
the United States worthy of being mentioned
anywhere. The cost of the natural history
eoliections purchased of Ward's Natural
Scieuvee Establishment by this group of mu-
seutas alone foots up a grand total of $730,223,

an average of $7,302 for each collection.

Here are a few of the entries nearest the
head of the list: Field Columbian Museum,
$100,900; Agassiz'’s Museum, at Harvard,
$70,560; <Giversity of Virginia, $51,000;
Princeton College, $33.272; Coronado Beach

OS Prov, Henry A. Warp.

149

Museum, Califo 1,989; Central Park
Museum, ‘New Yi City, $28,048; United
States National Museum, Washington, $20,837.

In the entire list only three museums have
spent as little as $1,000 each in Professor
Ward's great emporium of science. Twenty-
nine states and territories came in for a share,
and it is therefore easier to name those not rep-
resented than those that are. Though far dis-
tant, even Texas, Utah and California, have
called for their share of collections.

But all this represents what has been done
for one country alone, ours, the greatest of
them all. Itis only a modest fact, devoid of
all boastfulness, when I state that there are
only a few civilized, educated countries on the
globe to which the Ward establishment has not
sent natural history collections. To several of
the countries of Europe they have been large
and important, and every one of the ‘‘effete
monarchies” have received something. In

1879, when wandering through Tokio, Japan,

an utter stranger in a
strange land, I visited the
Educational Museum ; and
there, in a large collection
‘from Ward,” I beheld with
the joy of old acquaintance
the ‘‘ stuffed and mounted”
- figure of the very puma
that T shot on the Essequibo
River, South America, in
1876. Weshook hands most
joyously. It is hard to say
which was most glad to

told the puma is smiling
' yet. But, I hear the tray-
elers ask, from whence do
all these mighty collections
come, and how are they ob-
tained? I wish it were

really in my power to tell -

you; for behind many a

stuffed animal there larks a_

thrilling story of travel
adventure. But, for the
sake of illustration, let us
take the year 1877.

In February, Professor
Ward shipped home from
Egypt a large collection of
assorted mummies and other
i antiquities (“quality guar-

anteed, prices f. 0. b.”).
There were also several

j see the other, but I am |

150

boxes of petrified wood (Which mark a glorious
picnic on camel back to the Libyan desert
near Cairo), stuffed lizards with spines all
over their tails, fossils from the Pyramids, and
ibex heads bought of mild-mannered Bedouin
cut-throats from Sinai. A little later he sent
home more boxes full of queer marine things
from Jedda, and Massowah, on the Red Sea;
and three months later was with his gon,
Henry L. Ward, in South America, despoiling
monkeys of their skins and working up man-
atees into “specimens.” At that same time I
was ravaging India in his interest, harvesting
long-snouted crocodiles in Northern India,
Indian bison, bear, tiger and monkeys galore
in Southern India (twenty-six big cases all
told), and fishes, corals, crocodiles and more
monkeys in Ceylon.

A Dundee whaling captain who returned
that year kindly collected, ‘‘for Ward,” three
narwhals and a magnificent polar bear. He
had previously collected two or three whale
skeletons, the longest measuring seventy-two
feet, and also the skeleton of a grampus—the
“bull dog of the seas,” who, whenever he feels

THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS.

hungry, takes a bite out of the side of a whale.

At the same time a German baron, who
killed a valuable man in a duel, and was sud-
denly seized with an intense desire to travel,
was collecting gorillas in West Africa, all of
which subsequently found their way to Roch-
ester. In New Zealand, in Australia, in Mon-
tana, in British Columbia, in Alaska, and
scores of other places there were resident col-
lectors and hunters who were in lively cor-
respondence with Professor Ward, and colléct-
ing for him whatever their respective localities
yielded which it was worth while for a first-
class scientific museum to have.

A moose hunter in Maine, who shot far bet-
ter than he spelled, killed certain yery homely
big animals contrary to law, got arrested, and
afterward reported the whole matter thus :

‘friend Ward. i got you too moose, one Bull
and ful growne Cow. Tha had me up tywict
fur moose, but i noct them hier than a kyte
boath times, Wil send hides soone.”

At the establishment on College avenue thera
is a constant inpouring of boxes, barrely aud

bE

ote

THE First BUILDINGS OF THE WARD ESTABLISHMENT.

i

crates from all parts of the world, usually filled

with raw material—sometimes very raw, and

smelling most abominably! To offset this,

there is a constant outgoing of specimens of all
6 sorts, all beautifully prepared and ship-shape,

mounted on polished pedestals for display,

fully and correctly labeled, each one fitted to
. | perform its part in lessening the total sum of
% human ignorance.

In all this there is nothing that even suggests
the curiosity shop or the dime museum. On
. double headed calves, monstrosities in general,

and relics of all sorts, the law of the establish-

¢ ment has laid the grand taboo. There is
enough to handle that is purely scientific and
educational. The establishment consists of
twelve separate and distinct scientific depart-
mients, housed in sixteen buildings, several of
which are quite large. The working force
usually consists of about twenty-five persons,
the great aoe of whom are trained ex-

eS e§ nineteen printed catalogues,
some of them half as large as this magazine, to
” a dequnblay 2 th to scientific shudents, edu-

tors and ins the magnificent array
objects that are offered them toe sale.
What arethe departments? Wecannot stop
to name all, but the mostimportant must be
_ noticed. In the department of zoology there
eral buildings full to overflowing with
s and birds, and creeping and
gs from every clime and coun-
he. No living creature is too

THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILD

_ Specimens, and is worth $10,000. There is no
jh the meshes of the cat tne

RS. 15

. GRouUP OF BUFFALOES From THE WARD ESTABLISHMENT.

Establishment, and neither the elephant nor
the whale is strong enough to break through.
“Tf you cannot kill elephants with any of the
ordnance you have with you,” wrote Professor
Ward to me when I was hunting elephants fo1
him in Southern India, ‘‘then get a howitzer.
Anything to bring them down!”

One building you will find devoted to skele-
tons, and the osteologists who clean and mount
them so beautifully. Another building is filled
with the skins of animals, carefully arranged,
and well poisoned against the festive moth and
bacon beetle. The ground floor of the “large
museum,” where Jumbo was mounted, is oc-
cupied by a corps of taxidermists, toiling and
moiling to make hard and shapeless skins take
on once more the form, the pose, and the ex-
pression of life. They are mostly patient men,
but when some fool collector has served one of
them a particularly ill turn, take heed what
ye hear, and tell it notin Gath. In the mu-
seum, which is merely a store-house for choice
finished specimens, there is one great room
filled with skeletons of a thousand kinds, and
another devoted to stuffed animals. In two
other large buildings is a superb collection of
wonders from the sea—beautiful shells, cor:
star-lishes and the like, while still another large
hall is entirely filled with Professor Ward's
wonderful collection of sponges. The latter is
one of his pet collections, and is undoubtedly
the finest in the world. Itcontainsabout 2,000

to mention the “ shell house,” crammed
of shells, and also containing the collec-

152

tions of birds’ eggs—be
shells, I suppose.
The department of human igs has lately

se they, too, are

risen to high rank in this ue institution,
and now occupies an entire building. The de-
partment of mineralogy is the oldest of all,
and occupies a separate group of buildings as
a tenant-in-common with the departments of
geology (rocks and meteorites) and paleontology
(fossils and restorations). Under the latter
belong the wonderful series of casts of cele-
brated fossils, without which no scientific
museum can be complete. A museum can
exist without money; it can survive withouta

THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS.

man with a closely trimmed grey beard, rather
scanty gray hair, keen, piercing gray eyes, old- °
fashioned gold spectacles, a big leathei satchel,
and a seat fullof letters, pamphlets and books,
it will surely be Henry A. Ward, A. M., F.
G.S., ete. oe ;

His height is five feet eight, and at present

his weight is 172 pounds. If one could examine
him, analytically, it would be found that inter-
nally he is composed of raw-hide, whale-bone
and asbestos; for surely no ordinary human
materials could for forty-five years so success-
fully withstand the bad cooks, bad food and
bad drinks that have necessarily been encoun-

7 Group oF ORANG-UTANs, FROM THE WARD ESTABLISHMENT,

good curator, and in spite of a bad one; but

_ Ward’s casts of fossils it musthave. Shallthe
museums of Europe boast sole possession of
the megatherium, the glyptodon, the dino-
erium, or the Plesiosaurus Cramptoni?
ks to the Rochester man-who makes mu-

these in his own study if he chooses to do so,
and his floor is strong enough.
Professor Ward’s history and personality is
as strange as his profession. oh
The next time you are traveling by rail—
not in the smoking-car, however, for he never
uses tobacco—and see a studious, preoccupied,

.

mums, every American student may have all.

_ xiding, he actually reached his goal. it

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tered by any one who has, so recklessly of self, [
traveled all over creation.
On March 9, 1834, Professor Ward .was-borm..
on Bay street, in Rochester. His mother iy \

a most exemplary woman,’ but vinings Hy,
puritanical regarding religious observances,
especially the observance of the Sabbath.
At ten years of age, master Her v failed
harmonize with his parental ‘en'vironm

Chicago, and after long weeks of alking

his plan'to build for himself a wickiup on the
edge of the prairie near the city, shoot prairie
chickens, and sell them in the open market, for
cash,

During his first day’s experience on the Chi-
cago prairie, he encountered a good Samaritan,
who chanced to be the gentleman after whom
Clark street was subsequently named. Mr.
Clark kindly extracted the lad’s story, took the
embryo market hunter to his own home, ‘‘and
grossly betrayed my confidence,” said Profes-
sor Ward, ‘‘ by writing to my Uncle Moses,

‘who sent one of his clerks after me, who igno-

miniously took me back to Rochester. But at
the Rochester depot I gave him the slip, went
home without him, and he went back to Buf-
falo, where he spent two days watching forme
to get on a boat bound for Chicago.”

I doubt if any boy ever wrestled harder with
circumstances to win an education than did
young Ward during the two and a half years
he spent at the Middlebury Academy at Wyom-
ing, N. Y. By virtue of his official position
(as janitor), he livedin the top of the academy
building, and supported himself by doing more
kinds of work than many a boy
of to-day has everseendone. As
opportunity offered, he did car-
pentry, shoemaking, gardening,
painting, and livery stable work.
One of his specialties was cleaning
out wells. In September, 1848,
while the late well-known agri
cultural publisher, Orange Judd,
tramped the road between Warsaw
and LeRoy repairing clocks, Ward
and his partner went over the same
route, cleaning out wellson a very
profitable basis.

After Warsaw Academy, he
went to Williams College, at Will-
iamstown, Mass., where he was a
fellow student of Senator Ingalls,
and Honorable Charles E. Fitch.
There, also, he supported himself
by hard work in hours filched
from periods that should have
been devoted to study and recrea-
tion, His best friend was Pro-
fessor Emons, the geologist, who
showed him the path that after-
wards led to geology and minera-
logy, and started him therein.

Tn speaking of that period of his
life, Professor Ward admits that
he was a bad student in all his

THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS. 153

y, mineralogy and the
he always stood high.

u in mathematics?” I in-

studies except gi

I couldn't do a thing, and
cut the examinations entirely.”

In 1853 Professor Louis Agassiz came to
Pittsfield, Mass., twenty-eight miles from
Williamstown, to deliver a lecture. The col-
lege boys hired a band wagon and drove over.
The fare was seventy-five cents, and being with-
out money, young Ward walked the twenty-
eight miles to the lecture. Arriving late and
weary, he watched his opportunity when the
great naturalist paused to draw a figure, and
asked an old gentleman who sat beside him for
pointers as to what had gone before.

‘Did you not hear what the Professor said?”

‘«No, I had to walk from Williamstown, and
it made me a little late.”

“What? you walked from Williamstown to
this lecture ?”

“*-Yes.”

‘Well, well, well! The Professor must

BROOKS HAnL op Screnon, UNiyeRsrry oF VrRarnia.

pty

154

know it; and you must meet him when the lec-
ture is over.”

After the lecture Ward was introduced to
Professor Agassiz, and invited to visit him at
his hotel. The direct result of the fifty-six mile
walk to hear one lecture was that the walker
went at once to Cambridge, and became a pupil
of the great Swiss naturalist —the teacher who
would not allow his pupils to use books, com-
pelled them to learn by observation, and taught
them to use the simplest words in their
scientific work, instead of polysyllables.

At Cambridge young Ward and ‘Charlie
Wadsworth” became such fast friends that
ultimately General Wadsworth took the two
boys to Paris with him, gave Ward a year’s
course of special instruction in the School of
Mines, and to crown all, afterward gave the
lacky boysa glorious tiip to Egypt, up the Nile
0 the third cataract, “a ined up with Suez,
Thus began

A, Ward, from which he will never rest pe
manently so long as he can climb the steps ofa
car, or cross a gang plank without falling

After the close of the great Egyptian picnic,
young Ward resumed his studiesin Paris. The
only regular feature about his course was
ning out of money. He would study in the

THE KING OF MUSEUM-B UILDERS.

Pace of the earth so dear to the heart of Henry

JUMBO, MOUNTED AT WARD'S.

School of Mines and the museums until almost
penniless, when he would drop his books, and
hasten to the gypsum and chalk quarries of
Montmartre and Meudon. There he would
gather a load of good minerals and fossils, pack
them in his trunk, cross the channel to Lon-
don, and sell them to the British Museum, the
School of Mines, or wherever else a buyer could
be found.

He was not long finding out that British fos-
sils and minerals were also salable in Paris, and
forthwith he tapped the mining regionsof Corn-
wall and Cumberland. Often he returned to ~
Paris with quite a large sum of money in his
pocket, sometimes amounting, he slyly says, to
as much as $40! ‘Having completed a second
series of sales, the scientific commercial trav-
eler would again settle down to his eclectic
course of study in the School of Mines, Garden
of Plants, College de France and Sorbonne, and
study until his depleted treasury obliged him
to start out, collect more specimens, and again
take the road.

At Epernay, sixty miles Sons, good
oe Cliquot had a large vineyard which
ced the very fine bra‘”of champagne,
ng her name. Certili i’ § strata of the Paris

Basin, of the olde. -tocené age, cropped out

with vew¥ fine sections on the estate of Madame

Cliquot, and brought to light certain fossils

,

THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS. 155

that were then little known, and valuable. If
Professor Ward ever sets up a new coat of arms
for his posterity, surely it should contain some-
where the figure of a long, trumpet-shaped
shell of the genus Cerithium (C. giganteum), on
a carpet-bag, couchant.

Thanks to the conciliating diplomacy that
every collector must possess to be successful,
and to the generous good nature of Madame
and her manager, the young American who
spoke such excellent French was given acinch
on the fossils underlying a portion of that

Ward had wa field of commercial
activity over the whole of it. ‘I never tray-
eled third class when I could go fourth,” said
the man of many trips, ‘‘ but I went all over
Europe, selling specimens to museums, and
collecting to sell elsewhere. I went to Brus-
sels, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin and Vienna
repeatedly, and finally covered Sweden, Russia
and Spain. To me the stupidity of those
European museum men about gathering speci-
mens from other countries than their own,
seemed really curious, and I soon found not

Pror. WARD’s HoME on COLLEGE AVENUE.

estate, and told to work his will. He hired
workmen at forty cents per day, and for sev-
eral summers he mined and counter-mined his
concession so successfully that many score of
those curious fossils (the Cerithium) now re-
pose in British and continental museums, each
having yiel: a benefit to the purveyor of
from $5 to $19. Nature kindly made them
just small enc» =h to pack successfully in a
trunk, and also u,.." enough to carry “4 @

_ satchel when necessary,
Notwithstanding the noise it makes, Europe
\ isa small country; and ina very short time

only pleasure but profit in supplying their
wants. There is a certain spice of excitement
and exhilaration in finding a specimen that a
certain man desires very much, and in taking
it to him.”

Thus was developed the germ of Ward's
natural science establishment. The history of
that strange and unique institution really dates
back to the Paris basin, and the Cerithium
quarry in the vineyard of Madame Cliquot.
The making of the great Ward cabinet of min-
erals, and its purchase for $20,000 by means
of a popular subscription for the University of

156 THE KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS.

Rochester, is merely an ingfortant incident in
the development of the ié A still more
moving cause was the appointment of young
Mr. Ward, after five years’@tudy
and work abroad, to the profes
sorship of mineralogy, geology
and zoology in the University of
Rochester, It was during his
work there as a teacher that he
found how seriously every Ameri-
can teacher of science was ham- *
pered and handicapped by the lack
of tangible representatives of the
beasts, birds and reptiles that
abounded in geologic times,and are
now extinct. Therefore, for sev-
eral years in succession, he spent
his vacations in the royal museums \
of Europe, making plaster-of-paris
moulds of their rarer and more
striking fossils, from which he
was afterward enabled to make perfect plaster
copies of the originals for his beloved cabinet
in the University of Rochester.
\ The outcome might easily have been fore-
seen by a blind man, No sooner were those
wonderful casts brought forward than other
institutions of learning sought copies from the
same moulds, and ‘‘ Ward’s Casts of Cele-
brated Fossils” was the final result. Ameri-
can teachers and students, to whom the
originals were inaccessible, were delighted
with them.

Illustrated descriptive catalogues were is-
sued, the largest of which we used in my
alma mater as a text book! The casts became
exceedingly popular, and were an important
factor in the final upbuilding of what is now
the Ward establishment. In arranging to
furnish educators generally with duplicate
series of his casts of fossils, Professor Ward
became deeply impressed by the needs of
American teachers and museums of science
for more illustrative material of all kinds for
object teaching He also became acquainted
with so great a number of scientific men, and
his interest in supplying their wants finally
became so keen that in 1869 he gave up his
professorship in the University of Rochester,

Embowered in the stately elms and spread
ing maples that overarch College aven
almost in the shadow of the main buildin
the University, there now stands a gro
sixteen buildings of about twelve differen

= —

sizes, each with a gilded totem at its peak to

show the place in nature of its contents. Over

AN ORANG-UTAN.

the wide gateway to the court yard where

boxes are delivered and shipped, the lower

jaws of an immense right whale form a gothic
arch, As you enter, a conspicu-
ous placard informs. you, in the
most business-like way in, the
world—

THIS IS NOT A MUSEUM,
; Bur A WorkKING ESTABLISHMENT, !

Where all Are Very Busy.

If you doubt it, glance in at the
open doors as you pass along, and
note how busily the different
) groups of workers are wrestling

with halfstuffed orang-utans,

half-mounted buffalo skeletons,

with shells and corals, minerals,
rocks and fossils.

Adjoining all these buildings on the north 's
a spacious and well-lighted square house, in
the upper right hand corner of which is ‘‘the
study,”—dear to the memory of I cannot tell
you how many naturalists, both young and
old. In the front right-hand corner of the big
study, which is walled with books, barricaded
with maps and eternally littered with scien-
tific papers and pamphlets and photographs
and drawings and small specimens, there sits
the presiding genius of this unique world. No
man is more busy than he, yet Abraham Lin-
coln himself was not more approachable, nor
more kind toward everyone desiring to see him,

Twenty-one years ago, when I was an ignor-
ant, unattractive and bumptious college stu-
dent, no sooner did I hear of this strange man
than I fired a letter at him, modestly stating
that I would like to have him teach me every-
thing I most desired to know. When Profes-
sor Bessey read his kind, and even fatherly
reply, he remarked with vigor, '‘ Well, that
man is no churl, that’s plain.” And truly he
was not, as many an American naturalist can
testify. It was here that G. K. Gilbert, now
chief geologist of the United States geological
survey, made his start in the field in which he
is now distinguished : and so did the late Prof.
James Orton, of Vassar college; and Prederic
A, Lucas, curator of comparative anatomy ‘at
the National museum; and Prof. Walter B,
‘Barrows, now“ot. the ‘Michigan Agricultural

college ; Prof. F. We Stisbner, of the Massa-

chusetts State Normal school: Mr, Edwin E.

|
o
|

THEAKING OF MUSE UM:BUILDERS.

Howell, now in Washington with an estab-
lishment of his own; Mr, Arthur B, Baker, of
the National Zoological park; Mr. Charles H.
Townsend, naturalist of the United States Fish
Oomunission steamer Albatross, and Mr, J. W.
Schollick, osteologist at the National museum.
Professor Ward’s two grown sons, Charles H.
and Henry L. Ward, are still like a part of
himself, but each fills a responsible position in
the establishment as an expert, the former

157

as the head of whe now the department of
human anatomy, of which the establishment
is justly proud, the latter as paleontologist.
Scores of other then have been trained here
in various branches of scientific work, and
have gone forth to fill positions of responsibil-
ity. The Society of American Taxidermists,
which in five years’ time wrought a complete
revolution in taxidermic workin America, was
founded*here in 1880 by Professor Ward’s tax-

=

A GROUP OF PRoF. WARD'S WORKMEN.

158

k always received
well as active
my firm con-
3 done as much

idertaists, and in all it:
: from him hearty sympa’
an support and codperation. ,
viction that no man li

, toward the promotion of the ar taxidermy
>. as has been done by Henry A. and the
‘ influences created by him. Heis no taxider-
mist himself, and never was; but he knew

oe how to promote the production of fine work,
: and he believed in quality rather sian quan-
\« tity.

Of all the travelers I have ever known, aye,
or ever heard of, Professor Ward is the most
persistent, and I may still say, unsatisfied. It

* is true, the needs of the establishment require
that some one should be very much ‘‘on the
road,” not only in keeping up the supply of
good, salable collections, but also in keep-
ing in touch with the museum men of
the world, and selling them collections. I,
too, love to travel; but it makes me feel
both tired and homesick to think of all the
trips abroad he has taken. There is hardly

_ a nook or corner in the United States that he

* has not been to or through, and the same is

true of Europe. Egypt, Nubia, Arabia and

Somaliland are merely nice winter play-

grounds for him, and Zanzibar, Abyssinia, Mo-
ws gzambique, Zululand, Natal, Cape Colony and
= Griqualand, 800 miles in the interior of South

We , Africa, have all been ransacked by him for
. ae Specimens, So also with Japan, Australia,
~ Patagonia and Brazil.

When still a beardless young man he went
up the river Niger in time to tell David Liy-
ingstone all about that country in Sir Roderick

: tehison's London drawing room. On the
ican island of Fernando Po he was put
on the sand to die comfortably of Afri-
feyer, but was rescued and nursed back to
fe by anegro woman. But for Mrs. Showers,
5 Sabin for ships, and a missionary
“heathen, there would have been no
ie A. Ward these last forty years, and no
natural science establishment in Rochester.

- But why do I try to enumerate the
; ntries and places that have been visited
this traveler, when I can more easily
name those he has not visited? There are
* certain portions of the interior of South
DS es irics and of China, Japan, Siberia and
—'Thibet that he knows not by sight. FE has
r been to the Arctic regions, for h

old weather very disagreeable, nor to Kergue-
len Island. Excepting the above localities, the
world_is_his, _ ‘One of the greatest

I find in looking back over. the growth of the
establishment,” said he in a recent conversa- uy
tion, “is in thinking of the acquaintances I
have made in so many parts of the world, the
linking of so many kinds of men to myself, as
it were. It seems asif I had actual lines out
to all those countries ; and in the humanitarian
spirit which recognizes all mankind as one wl
blood, it is delightful to me to recognize ‘my
brothers’ in the people I have met all over the
world, savages and all. At Berberah last win-
ter I felt like saying to those Somali Arabs,
‘How do you do? I have felt for years asif I
knew you, and now I have come to see you.’
One result of my roaming is that it has given
nie a feeling of kinship for all mankind; and
to me it illuminates the world!”
Thousands of people there are, also, who
know Professor Ward only by correspondence,
all written by his own hand, and the cords of
letters he has written since I first knew him .
remind me of his handwriting. It is pecu-
liar, and once seen is never forgotten. Itisso —
heavy, so run together, and so peculiar that 7 thes Oe
it caused one of his western correspondents to. : -
protest as follows: ‘‘If you should ever try toy neyeas
get up a writing school in this vicinity, I will ye .
do alll can against yon Why will you per)
sist in writing with a sharp stick, when pens a
are so cheap?’ But there is balm in Gilead, =
and now that Professor Ward's charming ~~ gl
daughter Alice has attained to womanhood, ~
she is not only the head of his small house
hold, but still further lightens the cares of her
father by acting as his secretary, and writing”
many of his letters on a machine. : E5
Naturally one is curious to know rel-
igious belief of this strange cosmopoli Who
has hobnobbed with American puritans Freash, ;
infidels, Mohammedan Arabs, Chinese, Bu
hists, and goodies only knows what else
While going down the Red Sea with hin
bound for the great hot-bed of Mohamme
fanaticism, Jedda, I put the question. :
‘“‘T am an agnostic,” yas the answer
I would like to be called a Christian
I would like to be spoken of-as, one
the high hopes and ideals of ‘Christia nity, €
cept that mine are based on data entirely dis:
tinct from those on which Christians bas
theirs. In short. I say of many of highes'
claims and promises of the Christi
that I accept them as possibilitie
difference being ipa" while a Chri:

ae |

Th KING OF MUSEUM-B UILBERS.

:
well characterized in the Stoteh verdicl, ‘Not
proven, “and on thataccount the word agnos-
He expresses. my exact | tanding in religions
_tmatert. J
“J have often wondersd how Profes-
. sor Ward will start on his last jour-
ea ney jwhother it will be by accidert,
or Sudden and violent iinessin some
foreign hotel or steamer; or will the
point be reached when the insatiable
traveler is physically unable to travel
abroad, and old age compels him to
end his days peacefnily at home.
One thing only about this causes him
great concern. He is really haunted
by a fear that he may chanee te dis

ac fa? from Buffalo #at he caniul bie
peice et ey add gesthetically cre-

mated, and will be compelled ta
naderyo the ignominy of interment
and slow decomposition in mother
earth!

At present his Idoking forward to
ending hivyears inqnietstudy. The
estaulishmupthas recently been trans-
formed into a stoek company, with a
capital of $125,000), fully paid up. Of
the ten stockholdéra he of course is
one, tnd also is president.

All of th “ders live in
Rochester, and the gost of thei put
cach oapitel into the establishment
because they held that ita existence
there was an honor and a benefit to
fhe Flower City. Th would he base

ingratitnde to tail % speak gratefully of the

_ Bene and enthisiastic financial support
“ orded Professor Ward's unique enterprise

>.

sec
Sby-hieuncle. Levt A. Ward, during his life-time.
In &pite of the enormous sales that Professor
avd Hae mole, anil coutiggges to make, there
cotmparatively little clear profit in the busi-

“ness The abgolutel necessary to its
existence af ae. very heavy,
and someh Oo absorb what should

| ee eee secret of may
Perhaps one

by

reports of the National

| Moseam at yeakioetal “Tn speaking of the
@fiyence made by American institutions in

159

“Jy this conneetion should be mentioned the
very important influence of Professor Henry
A. Ward, who fa the conduct of his Natural

History Estable

iment at Rochester, was al-

Bervaio SxHov By Grand DUKE ALEXIS.

ways evidently actuated quite as much by al
love for natural history and the ambition to —
supply good material to museums, as by the
hope of profit, which was always by him sub-
ordinated to higher ideals ina manner not very
usual in commercial establishments.”
Personally, Professor Ward is by no means
a Tich man, save in education, observation and
acquaintance with man and nature all over the
habitable globe. Of riches which cannot be
stolen or lost, he is indeed ‘‘ well seized; and
are they not full compensation for the lack of
millions of unresponsive dollars that some mil-
lionaires possess without the intelligence or the
heart to make them yield the highest joy? I

atural scienee equipments, Dr, Goode SAy Be shiek 80.

=. j ia Wini1am T. Hornapay.
he Original contrition

te “ aa -

EGARDING ribbons, Charles Dickens
sagely remarks in the Christmas Carol

that they are so cheap you can make a

a brave show with them for Sixpence.

The same- thing may be said nowadays of tulips.

So easily: may they be procured, and withsuch

little difficulty.eultivated in our gardens that

one can hardly understand how the bulbs from
which these gorgeous flowers spring could ever

- have commanded the price of precious stones.

---—-——s Wet such was the case in the land of thematch

ay in the first third of the seventeenth century.

1 Could Conrad Gesner have been able to fore
cast the future and get a prophetic glimpse of
the syils his praises of the flower he saw for
the first time in the garden of Counsellor Her-
wart were fated to bring upon his countrymen,
he would no doubt have kept his discovery to
himself.

- Counsellor Herwart lived in Augsburg, and

‘was famons for his collection of ‘rare exotics.

- Among ‘them were some brilliant flowers

grown from bulbs sent him by a friendin Con-

_ Stantinople, where their beauties had long been
appreciated.

(Gesner on his return home spread abroad the

__ praises of this plant so effectually that in the

cy cgarss: of the next few years tulips were much

sought after by the wealthy, especially in Ger-
many and Holland, Rich folk at Amsterdam
a3 did not begrudge sending direct to Constanti-

- ‘nople for bulbs, and were quite willing to pay

big prices for them.

As years went by the tulip continued to in-

t ¢rease in reputation until it was as incumbent

~ upon persons of fortune to have a collection of
them as to keep a carriage.

= Nor was the interest in them confined to the

wealthy. The rage for their possession soon

spread to the middle classes of society, and
merchants and shop-keepers, even of moderate
means, began to vie with each other in the
size or strangeness of their collections, and in

the preposterous prices paid for bulbs. A

trader at Harlaem was known to pay one-half

of his fortune for a single root, not with the
design of selling it again at a profit, but sim-

a MANIA IN HOLLAND.* ees

*This essay will forma chapter of ‘‘ The Romance of Commerce,” a charming book by Mr. Oxley, to be"
lished soon by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York.—The Baitor.

ply to cultivate it in his own conservatory for
the admiration of his friends.

In explanation of this extraordinary interest f
in a single variety of plant, the following lines |

of Cowley may be quoted: ptt 185.
; "=e

“The Tulip next appeared, all over gay,
But wanton, full of pride, and full of play;
The world can't show a dye but here has place,
Nay, by newmixtures, she can change her face; -
Purple andseldiare both beneath her care, Py
The richest needlewurx she loves to wear: “e
Her only study is to pleas... ave
And to outshine the resti in finery.

But, poetic as this portraitis, SaanT Beck»
mann probably gets nearer the mark. “There ne
are few plants,” he says, “which acquire
through accident, weakness or disease, so many
variegations as the tulip. When uncultivated. =
and in its natural state, it is almost of one »
color, has large leaves, and an extraordinarily

long stem. When it has been weakened by 4-
cultivation it becomes more agreeable to tie ht
eyes of the florist. The petals are then paler,
smaller, and more diversified i in hue; 3 ete | 7 puis, eats
leaves acquire a softer green ‘ed: Thus . |

=
masterpiece of culture, the more beautiful iy ter. |
turns, grows so much the weaker, so that with ant
the greatest skill and most careful attention it
can gaeeely be transplanted, or even kept
alive.” :
au one familiar withthe sno der mal

although it is ne ~~ Sy to unt ind
people being infected with it at once,

Yet, ‘true it ig0a 2 amon
the Dutch for the Secasession of rare vari ones 4.
Was 80 great that the ordinary industries af tt
country fell into neglect, and the populati
down to the lowest ranks, embarked in the
tulip trade.

Charles Mackay, to whom I am indebted for |
much of my information, states that pric
rose rapidly untilin thé year 1635 persons Ws
known to invest a fortune of 100,000 florins”
the purchase of forty roots! It became neces-"
sary to appraise the bulbs by their weight in| |
per its, a perit being less than a grain, just a ¥