He, accordingly, handed in his resignation in May to take effect the following September; but there were so many protests against his action, from the Governor of the state all down the line, that he reconsidered the matter and agreed, in July, to remain at V. M. I. for the time being. After his resignation, he had been approached by a member of the Board of Trustees of the Agricultural College near Blacksburg, Virginia, who asked permission to propose Maury’s name as their president, but he declined the proposal. Inquiry was also made of him whether he would accept the presidency of a Polytechnic College to be founded at New Orleans. This appealed to him, particularly on the score of his health, but the project did not materialize. In addition to his work on the “Physical Survey of Virginia” and his geographical series, Maury spent considerable time upon the preparation and delivery of lectures and addresses, not in great numbers during his first two years at Lexington but with increasing frequency during the last years of his life. Among the notable speeches he made during 1869 were an address to the graduating class of V. M. I., July 2, and another before the Educational Association of Virginia, on December 16. In the former, he emphasized the fact that what they accomplished in life would depend largely on their own ‘resolves’, that they had not ‘finished’ their education but merely laid the foundation, that they should desire to master the specialty they took up but not to become narrow-minded, and that they should form the habit of observing nature for there they would see God. In closing, he called upon them to live up to their traditions. The later address is a plea for the giving of more attention in the educational system to the study of the physical sciences in view of the progress and development of physical discoveries; it began with the statement that the study of science should not make atheists, if the subject was rightly interpreted.