IMPETUS GIVEN MOVEMENT FOR MONUMENT TO MAURY

Speakers at Woman’s Club Urge Memorial to World’s Greatest Practical Scientist.

Fresh impetus was given the movement for a monument in Richmond to Matthew Fontaine Maury by he interest and enthusiasm of the meeting of the Matthew Fontaine Maury Association last night in the parlors of the Woman’s Club, which was featured by an address by Wyndham R. Meredith on “Maury as Man and Scientist.”

Mrs. E. E. Moffitt, president of the association, presided, and the speaker of the evening was introduced by S. S. P. Patteson.

Reasons for perpetuating the fame of the great Virginia geographer in a permanent memorial in Richmond were presented in a masterly manner by Mr. Meredith.

To Maury, he said, was the credit due for the establishment of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Weather Bureau was another of Maury’s ideas, and the winds and currents charts. To him the uncharted depths of the sea were an open book, making it possible for him to determine the existence of the Atlantic plateau and the realization of cable connection between the continents, he said.

He invented the electrical torpedo as a means of defense, and as a practical scientist, he stood alone. Mr. Meredith brought out the salient fact that Maury gave up more than any other soldier or sailor to enter the service of Virginia at the outbreak of the War Between the States.

Mr. Meredith declared that Maury has as much right to a monument in Richmond as any man, and that the reason a monument had not been erected to his memory was that this is an acquisitive age of material things. when people bow down to soldiers and politicians and ignore idealists.

Lollowing Mr. Meredith, George Bryan predicted that the next monument to be placed on Monument Avenue beyond Jackson’s would be Maury’s rather then one to another soldier, as the greatest practical scientist of world.

Judge Beverley T. Crump also spoke briefly in approval and support of the purpose and aims of the Matthew Fontaine Maury Association.