state, I desire to express to you our earnest sympathy with your object and the pleasure we feel in the fact that you have chosen Utica as the place for your deliberations.

Assuredly, you have not chosen it by reason of any especial features of the place, or of its surroundings, that are intimately associated with your pursuits, or make it helpful to you to inspect it. This is, to be sure, a region of manufactures; but among these manufactures, drugs are scarcely included. Nor do there abound in our neighborhood any plentiful sources of the raw materials on which you manipulate. Geologically, we are based on the barren Utica slate, and underneath it are the Trenton limestone and the older Silurian rocks, attractive enough to the seeker of fossils, but devoid of material subservient to your use. Our vegetable growths are of interest to the botanist; and here he will find a rich field for his rambles. But aside from such herbs, useful in medicine, as are common throughout the north, there is nothing with us that the druggist can specially care for. When the country about us was new, and we were still densely surrounded by forests, the settler, as he went on clearing his acres, burned up the timber and brought hither the product; and by our merchants of sixty and seventy years ago, no article taken in barter was more abundant than potash. Now-a-days, ashes are rarely reported, being needed for consumption at home.

One of our earliest druggists distilled and sent eastward, the oils of spearmint and peppermint. Others gathered ginseng for China, and of late there have been refineries among us for purifying the crude mineral oil, and factories for the making of varnish. These, with the exception, perhaps, of Webb's diminutive laboratory, where he experimented in the making of sulphate of quinine, nitrate of silver, and a few other chemicals, are the only works of the kind

that have ever existed in Utica. As to one of the articles commonly dealt in by druggists, it may be worth while to mention that here was devised by Dr. Amos G. Hull, about 1815, one of the earliest trusses for hernia-a truss that was largely in use, though it is now superseded by better. And at Clinton, near by, there was invented, some fifty years since, by Dr. Josiah Noyes, of Hamilton College, a composition for artificial teeth. It came into general use, and proved a blessing to dentists and patients, however little it helped the inventor.

Such items may seem to you little worthy of note, and will hardly enhance us in your estimation. But if the place presents for you no attractions on the score of its manufactures or its native productions, it may, we trust, for the sake of its people, and especially some of them who have been well heard of in science. To mention no more, two names at least, in the honored list of American savants, every student regards with the highest respect and pride. I allude to Prof. Gray of Cambridge, and Prof Dana of Yale, the latter a native of Utica, and a pupil here of the former. Prof. Gray was born just outside the limits of Oneida, but for several years was a teacher of natural science within it. "These two investigators in different fields," as has been well remarked by the editor of the Journal of Chemistry, "have done more to make American science respected the world over than any others. And they may be justly considered the highest living authorities in the departments of science in which they have labored. The great works to which they have devoted their lives are standard and authoritative among educated men everywhere, and will continue to be, long after their authors have passed away. The mineralogy of Dana and the botany of Gray, form as thorough and exhaustive compendiums of two departments of science, as the

present age affords." Men who have thus hoarded up the facts and set in order the principles, on which your art so largely depends, may well command your attention, and suffice of themselves to impart an interest to the town where they pursued their youthful career.

If I cannot point you to others like them, I can, at least, assure you that you sojourn with a people possessed of intelligence, discernment and taste; awake to the improvements in pharmacy, and not insensible to your endeavors to promote its further advancement. Personally, we have all had experience in these improvements, and like little Oliver, we cry for more. None of us have forgotten the nauseous compounds that once fell to our lot, and we cheerfully greet the smaller, more delicate and more savory articles, which have since taken their places. We remember the senna; the senna and pink, and other yet more bitter infusions that were once draughted upon us-the boluses of sulphur and molasses, of calomel and jalap, of rhubarb and magnesia, and their kindred defilements. And, in contrast, we have come to view with a kind of delight the small-dosed and well-flavored extracts; the nice elixirs; the candied confections; the sugar and gelatine coated pellets which the druggist now sets before us. Of belladonna, henbane and nux vomica we know that we can now take the important constituents in particles of almost contemptible smallness. That for spurred rye, we have the undreaded ergotine. That in lieu of teas made of chickens' gizzards, pigs' stomachs or pancreas, there are such things as the tasteless ingluvin, pepsin and pancreatine; that our old fashioned Dover-the pulvis ipecacuanhae compositusformidable in name at least, if not in nature—is now put in solution and sweetened to the palate of babes; and that even cod-liver oil and balsam of

copaiba may be so fettered and calmed, as to go down with ease.

As to our doctors, they have realized from the labors of the chemist and the pharmacist, both an increased purity of material and increased accuracy of effect in the means they employ. The es sential ingredients which you have set free from their inert and bulky connections, these physicians have come to rely on for precise execution, and have ceased to load their prescriptions with slugs, shot and stone of all sorts and sizes. Satisfied with your superior expertness, they have joyfully quit their own tiresome compounding, and have fallen in with their patients in accepting your nicer and more pleasing results. More than ever they regard you as allies on whose good faith and skill, their own reputation depends, and they would fain see you furnished with every equipment effectual to combat disease. And as, in their own case, they appreciate the benefits of association for the discussing of topics in which its members share an interest in common--of a bond to hold in social union and order, all who practice by the same methods and system, and to frame the ethical rules by which each one is guided-so are they persuaded that the drug-makers and vendors should have a guild to themselves, and a code for their government.

What this code shall embrace, it is for you to determine. As respects us, we are chiefly concerned in what relates to the genuineness and efficiency of the compounds you prepare; conformity in strength and in price of preparations called by the same name; to the careful analysis and fit elaboration of new articles, whose value as medicines, experience has sufficiently tested; to fixing the relations between adviser, dispenser, and taker,

so that neither shall trench on the rights of the other, and justice and equity harmonize all; to the means you shall take to exalt the grade of acquirement needful both in drug clerks, and in those who employ them, and finally, to guard us from incompetent and unworthy dealers.

Motives like these having formed, as I presume, the purpose of your convention, they have, I assure you, our approval and earnest support, and therefore I speak for us all, when I say you are cordially welcome. (Applause.)

At this point the Secretary read a telegram from the New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association, as follows:

PRINCETON, N. J., May 21st, 1879. New York Pharmaceutical Association, Utica, N. Y. :

The New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association, now in session at Princeton, send cordial greetings and kindly wishes.

R. W. VANDEVOORT,

Corresponding Secretary.

Prof. BEDFORD: The New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association meets to-day in Princeton, and they are having a two days' session-to-day and to-morrow. I have attended many of these sessions in years gone by, and have taken great pleasure in those meetings, and I look upon the members of that Association as my warm friends. Knowing them all quite well, I certainly feel very much gratified at the sympathy-the cordial sympathy-expressed in the telegram I hold in my hand.

I would call upon Dr. A. B. HUESTED, of Albany, to respond to the addresses of welcome which we have listened to.