But when one considers the magnitude of Miss Ormerod's services to her country and to the world, when one reflects on the tens of millions of pounds sterling which she saved to the British Empire by her researches and writings, these honors seem trivial and unworthy of the great nation which she so signally benefited. If any of her countrymen had labored so long and so successfully and made so many sacrifices for the welfare of the nation as she had, he would have been knighted or ennobled. But age-long prejudices and traditions will not yet permit England to bestow the same honors on women as on men, no matter how brilliant their attainments or how distinguished their services to the crown and to humanity. Recognition of this kind may possibly come as one of the desirable innovations of the twentieth century. No lover of fair play can deny "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."[176] The names of the women in the United States who have become prominent by their researches and writings in the various branches of the natural sciences would make a long list. And when one recalls the fact that it was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that American women were afforded an opportunity to study science, it is a matter of surprise that the list is so extended. For practically no provision was made for the serious pursuit by them of the natural sciences until the opening of Vassar College in 1865, and it was not until the closing years of the century that the portals of many men's colleges were unlocked and thrown open to the hitherto proscribed sex. Considering all the obstacles they had to overcome, the ignorance, the prejudice, the opposition of all kinds they had to combat in the United States, women have already accomplished wonders and bid fair to achieve much more in the near future. Now almost every educational institution in the land, private or state, has one or more women professors or associate professors. They teach all the branches of the natural sciences that are taught by their male colleagues,--botany, geology, mineralogy, zoology, anatomy, bacteriology and all the numerous subdivisions of these sciences,--and they teach them with success and eclat. They also occupy responsible scientific positions in various state and federal institutions. Thus one woman has been the principal of the Denver School of Mines, while another has been the state entomologist for Missouri. Women are also found doing important work in the National Museum, in the Smithsonian Institution, and in the Agricultural Department in Washington, as well as in the various museums, botanical gardens and public laboratories of the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific.