Transcribe Notice of the Ward cabinets...the University of Rochester (1863)

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38                               GEOLOGY AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION.

made in these surveys and exhibited in the State Capitals, bred
others, private and collegiate, and diffused a love for nature and a 
taste for observation. The mammoth cabinets of Amherst, Yale, 
and Harvard arose in this revival of science. And yet our cabinets, 
great as they are, are not what they should be. They are 
excellent so far as they go, and are absolutely essential to that 
extent; but they are not all that our students demand, for they
have not kept pace with the science they profess to teach. They 
show too exclusively the American side of the picture. Now our 
country is limited in its geological teachings, because of the paucity 
of eruptive rocks and the consequent horizonality and inaccessibility 
of its sedimentary strata. Treatises and text-books on geology 
appear, embracing fossils and rocks, for which we look in vain in 
any New England institution. In vain our professors attempt to 
describe and the students to comprehend, without a tangible illustration. 
'So intricate (says Aggasiz) are the relations between the 
successive steps of creation, every link appears necessary to the full 
comprehension of the great plan.' Perceiving this deficit in our 
educational appliance, and tantalized by a thousand drawings of 
actual objects to be seen in the British Museum and the Garden of Plants, 
where every fossil from the monad to the mastodon, and 
every age from the Cambrian to the Tertiary, find their full and 
equal representation - our earnest devotees of science hie [sic] away to 
Europe to finish their studies.

"But fortunately for science and for the honor of America, this 
grand desideratum has been lately met, in a manner which leaves
hardly anything to desire. Prof. H.A. Ward, of Rochester University, 
a disciple of D'Orbigny and Elie de Beaumont, and an 
ardent loved of nature in all her forms, projected a Cabinet of 
Geology, which should be an epitome of the entire science. Blest 
with an indomitable perseverance, and with  full appreciation of 
the enterprise, and aided by the princely liberality of the Hon. Levi 
A. Ward, that plan has been carried out. From the first. Prof. W. 
contemplated the representation of every genus of fossil organism, 
hitherto described, as well as a complete lithological and mineralogical 
collection - expressly for educational purposes - and he has not 
swerved from that design. The papers and scientific journals have 
abounded in admiration of this great undertaking, and it has 
received the unqualified praise of our most eminent teachers of 
science, such as Silliman, Hitchcock and Hall, Doremus and Dewey.

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38 GEOLOGY AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION.

made in these surveys and exhibited in the State Capitals, bred others, private and collegiate, and diffused a love for nature and a taste for observation. The mammoth cabinets of Amherst, Yale, and Harvard arose in this revival of science. And yet our cabinets, great as they are, are not what they should be. They are excellent so far as they go, and are absolutely essential to that extent; but they are not all that our students demand, for they have not kept pace with the science they profess to teach. They show too exclusively the American side of the picture. Now our country is limited in its geological teachings, because of the paucity of eruptive rocks and the consequent horizonality and inaccessibility of its sedimentary strata. Treatises and text-books on geology appear, embracing fossils and rocks, for which we look in vain in any New England institution. In vain our professors attempt to describe and the students to comprehend, without a tangible illustration. 'So intricate (says Aggasiz) are the relations between the successive steps of creation, every link appears necessary to the full comprehension of the great plan.' Perceiving this deficit in our educational appliance, and tantalized by a thousand drawings of actual objects to be seen in the British Museum and the Garden of Plants, where every fossil from the monad to the mastodon, and every age from the Cambrian to the Tertiary, find their full and equal representation - our earnest devotees of science hie [sic] away to Europe to finish their studies.

"But fortunately for science and for the honor of America, this grand desideratum has been lately met, in a manner which leaves hardly anything to desire. Prof. H.A. Ward, of Rochester University, a disciple of D'Orbigny and Elie de Beaumont, and an ardent loved of nature in all her forms, projected a Cabinet of Geology, which should be an epitome of the entire science. Blest with an indomitable perseverance, and with full appreciation of the enterprise, and aided by the princely liberality of the Hon. Levi A. Ward, that plan has been carried out. From the first. Prof. W. contemplated the representation of every genus of fossil organism, hitherto described, as well as a complete lithological and mineralogical collection - expressly for educational purposes - and he has not swerved from that design. The papers and scientific journals have abounded in admiration of this great undertaking, and it has received the unqualified praise of our most eminent teachers of science, such as Silliman, Hitchcock and Hall, Doremus and Dewey.