of your labors, we ask you to meet with us at Wesleyan Hall, on Monday, June 22d, at three o'clock, p. m., for this purpose.
We are your obedient servants,
Charles Francis Adams,
T. W. Parsons,
James Walker,
Theodore Lyman,
George T. Bigelow,
Henry A. Whitney,
Henry W. Longfellow,
James M. Barnard,
Richard H. Dana, Jr.,
George S. Hale,
Charles W. Eliot,
Martin Brimmer,
George M. Lane,
William Gray,
Wolcott Gibbs,
W. G. Weld,
H. L. Eustis,
J. H. Dix,
O. W. Holmes,
Alexander Agassiz,
and others.
The late Hon. Richard H. Dana presided, introducing an eloquent address by Dr. Gould, and in his words of welcome said:
We have met to express our respect to him for his learning and abilities, and the courageous manner in which he has devoted them to this new field of investigation—banished from home, and from every association which his childhood and manhood had made most dear to him. . . . We feel now that there exists a bond between that great republic of the South and our own that—she has shown the same spirit of enterprise that has caused our own advance—and we rejoice that through their honored President, Sarmiento, the man of science was invited from this country, who should open some of those great fields of exploration for which her wide territory and cloudless skies present such facilities. Our sympathy and our admiration should be expressed toward the people of the Argentine Republic, and we trust that Dr. Gould will give them to understand that the citizens of his native State have a strong feeling of respect and gratitude to them for the paths they have opened and the progress they have made.
It is in these regions, so little known, that Dr. Gould has been laboring for four years, a missionary of science, under strange skies, as well as on foreign soil, among a new people; and on his return to his native town we are met to give him a cordial welcome, to express our pride that he has secured this opportunity to the honor of American science, of New England and of Boston.
Dr. Gould is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, of the French Academy of Sciences, of the Academy of St. Petersburg, as well as of the American Academy of Science, and many other learned bodies. He has given to the world works which will be classical, and in the history of his country his name will stand among those of the most illustrious savants who have contributed to the development and advancement of science.
Dr. Gould was married October 29, 1861, to Mary Apthorp Quincy, a helpmate without whom his long expatriation would have been a banishment, and without whose sympathy and active assistance his greatest labors would have been impossible.