THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 125 



scientific library, especially rich, naturally, in the publications of 

 organizations having objects similar to its own. Most of these ex- 

 changes have been received without interruption, and prove invaluable 

 to investigators who desire to go into the earlier literature of their 

 subjects. At the end of 1903, 569 exchanging institutions were re- 

 ported by the librarian, and the library contained 14,491 books and 

 11,017 pamphlets. Unfortunately, lack of room has caused these to 

 be rather difficult of access for some years past, and the index, started 

 many years ago by Dr. Baumgarten, has fallen into arrears. The 

 latter fault, however, is in process of correction, and it is believed that 

 the library will be more usable and more used in the future than has 

 been the case heretofore. 



In the homeless state in which the academy has passed the last 

 third of a century, little inducement has been found for the accumula- 

 tion of museum material that could not be displayed and could scarcely 

 be housed. Some things, however, there are, which will form a nucleus 

 for the museum of the future, for while the activity of the academy 

 has been concentrated of late on holding meetings and publishing its 

 transactions, the original inclusion of a museum among its prominent 

 objects has been neither forgotten nor discarded. Among the present 

 collections are a dozen or so of good fossiliferous slabs from various 

 formations, some of them of unique value; a few remnants of the 

 Hayden collection saved from the fire, containing among other things 

 the type of Tetanotlierium Prouti; a good specimen of Bos cavifrons; 

 some ten thousand paleontological specimens brought together by 

 Yandell, containing his own types and those of many of the species 

 described by Shumard, whose own poorly preserved collection, of about 

 the same size, is owned by Washington University; several hundred 

 specimens of pottery from the mounds of southern Missouri, on which 

 is based a quarto publication by Evers, issued by the academy some 

 years since; two or three dozen human crania from the same district, 

 the measurements of which have proved so divergent from those of 

 skulls of comparable periods that those to whom their study was en- 

 trusted have never ventured on a description of them; several dozen 

 meteorite specimens, of which the most important is one originally 

 weighing about 35 pounds, which is described and figured in the first 

 volume of the academy's transactions; and a collection of over 600 

 butterflies, beautifully mounted on Denton tablets, was presented to 

 the academy a few years ago by subscription, through the efforts of 

 Mrs. W. L. Bouton. 



It may seem to have been by chance, but I think it appears from 

 what has already been said that it was not, that the early existence of 

 the academy was closely associated with the St. Louis Medical College, 

 and that leading members of the faculty of that institution have always 

 been among its active members. Too much credit can not be given to 



