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discrimination and judgment. The University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Hospital, the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences were the main recipients of his liberal donations during his lifetime; and several of these institutions also became principal legatees in his will.
Nor ought it to abate our appreciation of this munificent liberality, that, since his decease, the expected pecuniary value of these legacies has not been fully met, on account of the depreciation of securities,[1] and the inability of his cranberry plantation in New Jersey as yet to realize the large profits which he anticipated from it.
This last project, it appears needful to believe, was probably the least fortunate of Dr. Wood's undertakings. So sanguine, however, was he in regard to it, that he added for its extension a large number of acres to his farm at Greenwich, at prices larger than their owners, his neighbors, thought fit to ask of him. Here, as usual, mercenary aims were the farthest from his thoughts.
Mention has been before made, incidentally, of Dr. Wood's inclination towards a certain stateliness in his mode of living. In traveling during the summer through the State of Pennsylvania, and even in going
- ↑ His will was made in 1871, when gold was at a premium of 12½ per cent., and all other kinds of property were at a correspondingly high, if not higher range of prices, compared to those following the resumption of specie payments, and especially the depression which succeeded the "panic" of 1873.
