xiv PROCEEDINGS OF THE CENTENARY MEETING. 



Pupils from schools have come under the guidance of their teachers to 

 study and profit by the exhibits displayed in our public museum halls, while 

 our specialists have delivered courses of popular lectures on the natural sciences 

 under the auspices of the Academy and the Ludwick Institute. 



In every way within its power the Academy has promoted for a century the 

 study of the natural sciences, advanced or elementary, pure or applied. 



The one hundredth anniversary is a particularly happy birthday because 

 our precious natural history library, unexcelled in America, and our priceless 

 collections of mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, shells, insects, plants, ethnological 

 and geological specimens, unsurpassed in several of the departments and in all of 

 them rich in the type specimens of the early naturalists of America, having been 

 for almost one hundred years exposed to the danger of damage or destruction 

 by fire are now, with the intelligent cooperation of the Commonwealth of 

 Pennsylvania, placed in a thoroughly fireproof building. 



The society has, however, never received state or city financial aid for 

 maintenance, but has depended entirely upon the liberality of intelligent 

 people, mainly of Philadelphia, for the necessary funds to purchase land for 

 our buildings, to publish the results of the scientific researches of our members, 

 to fit out expeditions, and of late years to pay meager salaries to the members of 

 the scientific staff. 



While we have thus built up world-renowned study collections it has been 

 impossible to develop the popular exhibits that sister institutions, rich in 

 state and municipal appropriations, have been enabled to install. 



We have, however, kept our collections systematically arranged and have, 

 during the last decade, had the satisfaction of seeing all the historical types and 

 study series placed in metal cases, impervious to light, dust or moth, thus insuring 

 them the longest possible life. 



Our corresponding membership now numbers about two hundred, composed 

 only of the greatest scientists of the period. 



Biographical sketches of our officers and scientific workers who carried us 

 through the last one hundred years are recorded in our publications and as we 

 have so little time before us they can only be casually alluded to in this brief 

 resume" of the Academy's history. We are, however, proud of the escutcheon 

 upon which the history of their lives is engraved. 



Members of this Academy have taken a very prominent part in explorations. 

 Thomas Say was a member of Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains 

 in 1819 and 1820 and was one of the first scientific men to become personally 

 acquainted with the vast natural history resources of the great West. 



Nuttall and Townsend, thirty years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 

 crossed the continent to the mouth of the Columbia River, and extended their 

 explorations to the Hawaiian Islands, returning around the Horn. They brought 

 home rarities of animal and plant life, many of which were unknown to science. 

 These collections were placed in the Academy's museum, then the chief repositorj 

 for natural history specimens in America, and here they are still preserved. 



