Last Friday father sent home $128.03 to be deposited as the first money of any amount he ever received for any scientific occupation (regular salary at least) and Thursday afternoon I was down town and met B. He said he had been around among some of father’s friends and collected $100 to make father a life member of the Chicago Astronomical Society--(You know this society owns the “big telescope” at Dearborn Observatory). I forbear to quote the daughter’s delighted remarks which follow; more profitable will it be for us to consider for a moment the bitter irony of this situation. After more than forty years of zealous public service to receive so pitiful a salary, his first tangible reward, and to have this discontinued within a few months time! To be fitted both by inherent tastes and lifelong training to enjoy and profit by membership in such an association, and yet unable, because our countrymen estimate the services of scholars so low, to pay the paltry membership fee! Here, indeed, is the cross on which in the United States today we crucify scholarship. One other matter and I shall conclude. Before he left Ohio Dr. Lapham had labored to induce the legislature to make provision for a geological survey of that state. From the time of his arrival in Wisconsin he strove as an individual to carry out such a survey here. Necessarily in order to do it thoroughly and to publish its results the power of the state must be brought into play. At length in 1873 provision was made by statute for a geological survey of Wisconsin and Governor Washburn appointed Dr. Lapham chief geologist to have the direction of the enterprise. The work was pushed vigorously and efficiently throughout the seasons of 1873 and 1874. Suddenly, in January, 1875, Governor Taylor removed Dr. Lapham in order to make a place for one of his spoils-seeking supporters. According to the _American Journal of Science_ the new geologist’s “sole recommendation for the position was political services, no one having ever heard of him before as acquainted with geology or any other science.” Thus finally did our state requite its first scholar--first certainly from the viewpoint of chronology, and probably first from every other viewpoint. “Knowing that time, which cures all things,” wrote the three assistant geologists he had chosen two years before, “will do you ample justice, and feeling most strongly the irreparable loss that the state has sustained in the disseverment of your connection with the survey, we remain with the most sincere respect, Your obedient servants.” As an indication of the quality of the assistants selected by Dr. Lapham it may be noted that one of the men who thus testified this appreciation of their deposed chief was Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, who has been for many years chief geologist of the University of Chicago.