Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/64

Rh animals, feræ naturæ, possess an importance which we perhaps do not always appreciate, for it must be observed—and it is one of the saddest facts to every lover of nature—that these types of wild animals are disappearing with most frightful rapidity. Many of them are already extinct, others are daily becoming so, and, consequently, within a generation or two at the most, these numerous and beautiful races which adorn the earth will have, in a great measure, disappeared, and all that our descendants will know of them will be represented by the crumbling skeletons in our museums, or the moldy skins which caricature the beautiful creatures that still exist. Think, then, how great will be the value that will attach to these beautiful pictures, in which the skill and feeling of the artist will have depicted, for the admiration of posterity, animals no longer existing. ["Hear! Hear!"] Think how we prize now the few pictures that remain of the dodo, or even those rude etchings which the Cave man inscribed with a flint on a bone, representing the outlines of the mammoth.

This is the point of view from which Science regards the importance of such pictures as those to which I have referred. But there is a portrait on these walls which reminds me of another branch of my subject. We have there a beautiful painting of Professor Dewar, destined for the walls of Peter House College, whose fame will be associated with those splendid researches with which Professor Dewar is connected, and which have added additional renown to the Royal Institution of Great Britain. ["Hear! Hear!"] On behalf, then, of the various departments of Science, I return you my hearty thanks for this toast, which you, sir, have so kindly proposed, and which has been so cordially honored by your illustrious guests. [Cheers.]