Page:Memoir of George B. Wood, M. D., LL.D.djvu/24

 may we not reasonably hope, that India will fall off spontaneously and peaceably from her long attachment, and, either as one or as several people, take her place in that brotherhood of nations, which, in America, in Africa, and in Australasia, will have owed their origin or civilization directly or indirectly to Great Britain, and will continue to revere the name and cherish the institutions of this mother of empires, when she herself shall have fallen into the decrepitude of age, or have gone to join her predecessors in the realms of history?"

A number of Biographical Memoirs, also, were written by Dr. Wood. We find, in his first volume, a memoir of Dr. Joseph Parrish, and one of Dr. Samuel George Morton; in the second volume, of Dr. Franklin Bache, of Frederick Beasley, D.D., and of Dr. James L. Fisher. All but one of these were prepared either for the American Philosophical Society, or for the College of Physicians, or the Medical Society of Philadelphia.

Of scientific contributions by Dr. Wood to the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, I find record of four. The first of these was delivered as an address to the Society, in 1860, his second year of service as its President, upon "Dangers of Hasty Generalization in Science." It exemplified, as well as inculcated, that cautious, although never timid spirit, which becomes the true philosopher; which welcomes the appearance of every promising novelty,