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 ROBERT E. PEARY 371 Among other recognitions, he has received special medals from the most important geographical societies of this conn- try, including the Peary Arctic Clnb, and from the national and imperial geographic societies of England, Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Scotland, and Holland. He has received the honorary degree of doctor of laws from Bowdoin College and the Edinburgh University, and honorary membership in many scholastic and commercial societies. Mrs. Morris K. Jessup presented to the American Museum of Natural History a bust of Rear Admiral Peary, which oc- cupies a niche in Memorial HalL Discovery has not been the only field of labor of Robert E. Peary. His specialty in his earlier profession was ship canals and dry docks. He has to his credit the invention of the first practicable high lift lock gate for ship canals. Some engineers have credited Peary and Menocal with the conception and suggestion of the Panama Canal. These men were sent by the Navy Department to resurvey the Nicara- guan route. In their report, for the first time in a public print, is described and illustrated the type of canal now com- pleted at Panama. Although he has accomplished what would be a credit to any man 's life work, Peary has not resigned his place in the world *s work. He is now actively interested in the subject of Antarctic explorations by this country, and the broad phases of aeronautics. He believes the conquest of a new world — the atmosphere — which since the creation till now has re- mained sacred to the winds, the birds, and the lightning, is a great and wonderful thing. He says it has a special interest for him ^^ because almost simultaneously with my good fortxme in closing a four-hun- dred-year book of history, *The Conquest of the Pole,' the Wright brothers opened the pages of this new book, * The Con- quest of the Air, ' the future chapters of which no one can be- gin to imagine. " Peary has been made an honorary member of the Aero Club of America. This club, with others, have felt the need of an aeronautical map of the world to be adopted internationally by