ence will for the first time meet in St. Louis — an event, let us hope, that 

 will be fraught with beneficial results to science and add to our local inter- 

 est in her advancement. It behooves us, as an academy, to at once take 

 steps to perfect the preliminary arrangements. There should be formed 

 with as little delay as possible a local committee, consisting of chairman, 

 secretary and treasurer, which should enter into correspondence with the 

 Permanent Secretary of the Association, Mr. F. W. Putnam of Salem, Mas- 

 sachusetts. A committee at large of twenty or thirty prominent citizens 

 should also be formed with sub-committees on reception and accommoda- 

 tion, finance, excursions and railroads. As an academy we should feel 

 a certain responsibility in this work, and I recommend the immediate 

 appointment of a committee to take this matter into consideration and 

 arrange with members of the Historical Society, Chamber of Commerce, 

 Board of Public Schools, city government, etc., to call a meeting for the 

 purpose of organization. During the past ten years I have attended no 

 meeting of the Association that has not produced beneficial results among 

 the entertainers, and let us strive to make its next meeting worthy of and 

 creditable to St. Louis. 



LIBRARY. 



Our library annually increases with the addition of valuable exchanges 

 from scientific bodies the world over. It forms, indeed, the only extensive 

 scientific library in the city. Under these circumstances I regret very 

 much to be unable to report any more favorably than I did a year ago as 

 to the care and condition of the publications that have been added during 

 the past few years. Our pi-esent Librarian informs me that none of the 

 accessions since October, 1876, have even been entered, so that it is almost 

 impossible to consult any of the more recent publications. There is an 

 evil here that needs remedying, and it seems to me that we must go to the 

 root of it. 



Our contract with the Public School Board requires us to do our own 

 classifying and cataloguing, or, at least, that it be done under our direction ; 

 and as a means of accomplishing this we have been in the habit of appoint- 

 ing as our librarian the person employed in like capacity by said Board. 

 It was expedient to do so under the circumstances, and it has been our mis- 

 fortune that the appointees have not sufficiently appreciated the responsi- 

 bility and labor which the acceptance of any position within the gift of the 

 Academy necessarily brings. The plan which we have recently adopted 

 of placing the exchanges for the current year in a separate case on the main 

 floor of the library building will partially remove the evil here referred to, 

 and I would recommend, for its thorough removal, that the next Library 

 Committee confer with the Board of Public Schools with a view to some 

 modification of our agreement that will insure the proper arrangement and 

 care of our books and pamphlets in future. 



BUILDING — MUSEUM. 



By the terms of the deed, the Lucas lot, donated conditionally to the 

 Academy and to the Historical Society, virtually passed from our posses- 



