sion last June, and all efforts to get the heirs to make an unconditional 

 donation of it have proved unavailing. It will, I think, be best to form- 

 ally renounce all claim to the lot, and thus avoid incurring a fruitless 

 taxation. Here let me emphasize all that I said a year ago as to the vital 

 importance to us of a permanent building for our museum and library. 



I would urge in addition that a taste for natural science is largely due, 

 in any community, to the stimulus afforded and interest excited by a mu- 

 seum. Our older members are gradually passing away. Where are the 

 young naturalists to take their places.? As a city, St. Louis is lacking in 

 specialists in natural science to a remarkable degree, and we can no longer 

 find among our own members specialists enough to frame the standing 

 committees on ethnology, embryology, comparative anatomy, mammal- 

 ogy, ornithology, ichthyology and erpetology, geology and paleontology, 

 chemistry, etc. This state of things would not long exist with a well kept 

 museum and library to lead and encourage the youth so inclined into the 

 pleasant, elevating and refining paths of natural history. 



Early in the year a special meeting of some of the members was held> 

 to consider the best means of raising funds for a building, but all effort 

 was for the time abandoned on account of business depression. With 

 indications of improvement in this respect, with the increased interest 

 in our work that may be looked for in the community from the meeting 

 with us of the American Association, the time seems to me ripe for 

 renewed endeavor. I have always believed that with proper eftbrt the citi- 

 zens of St. Louis would not remain blind to our requirements. Davenport, 

 Iowa, is about to dedicate a building to the service of science, and the 

 funds to erect it were obtained almost solely by the persistent eftbrts of a 

 single lady. I would suggest the appointment of a committee of five or 

 ten members to prepare printed subscription blanks, to be headed by 

 subscribers from among our own members, by means of which to make a 

 steady and continued appeal to our citizens until a sufficient sum is sub- 

 scribed. We have been expecting and hoping ever since we had an orga- 

 nization, that some wealthy citizen, having a due appreciation of the 

 importance of science and of the aims and objects of tire Academy, would 

 generously help us out of our discouraging financial straits; but such aid 

 need hardly be looked for till we have made a start through our own 

 efforts. 



METEOROLOGY OF THE YEAR. 



The meteorological peculiarities of the year have been somewhat strik- 

 ing. While the spring and summer throughout most of the Mississippi 

 Valley was unusually wet, a very severe and disastrous drought prevailed 

 in Southern California, and a less severe one in the more northern States 

 from Minnesota to the Atlantic. The mean temperature at St. Louis, as 

 shown by Dr. Engelmann's records, has been about the average for forty- 

 two years, the lower temperature of nine months being counteracted by 

 the higher temperature of February, October and December — a striking 

 illustration of the greater value of extremes as conveying useful infbrma- 



