56 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE 



In 1841, the Society commenced i^ublishing its Pi'oceedings, and the first two volumes 

 with a large part of the third, had been issued before the annual meeting of 1850. 



The Journal of the Society was issued with some degree of regularity, gaining for it 

 much reputation both at home and abroad, by the character of its articles. At the 

 time of the annual meeting in 1850, five volumes had been published, all of them 

 containing papers of great value, many of them elaborate treatises upon the natural pro- 

 ductions of our own State, of which may be mentioned those on the Fishes and Reptiles 

 of Massachusetts, by Dr. Storer ; on the Lichens of New England, by Edward Tucker- 

 man, Jr.; on the Mosses of Massachusetts, by John Lewis Russell ; on the Shells of Mass- 

 achusetts, by Dr. Augustus A. Gould and by Joseph P. Couthouy ; and on the Coleop- 

 tera of Maine and Massachusetts, by Dr. J. W. Randall. 



The members of the Standing Committees of the Council during the ten years past, 

 should be mentioned here, as on them devolved a great part of the business of the So- 

 ciety other than that performed in the Museum. 



They were the Presidents, Geo. B. Emerson and Amos Binney, Jr.; the Librarian, 

 Charles K. Dillaway ; the Treasurers, John Jas. Dixwell and Patrick T. Jackson, Jr.; 

 with Drs. Harris, Storer, Gould, Bacon, Kneeland, Abbot, Cabot, Wyman, Shurtleflf, and 

 Messrs. Epes S. Dixwell and Thos. Bulfinch. 



Dr. Storer served on two of these Committees, viz., those of Publication and the Lib- 

 rary during the whole period, and several of the others a great part of the time. 



Decade III. Mat 1850 - May 1860. 



1850. In June, a letter was received from the President of the Society, stating that he 

 had procured through the American Minister at the Court of St. James, a donation from 

 the Hon. East India Company of a complete suite of casts from the fossils of the Him- 

 alaya Mountains. These were received in the following November, and were placed in 

 the Cabinet of the Society. There were in all forty-one specimens, mostly of Mam- 

 malia. The collection was found to be peculiarly rich in Pachydermata, especially 

 mastodons and elephants. Of reptiles there were casts of several bones of a gigantic 

 turtle. Upon motion made, the thanks of the Society were passed to the Hon. East 

 India Company for the very valuable donation made by them, and also to the Hon. 

 Abbot Lawrence, and to Sir John Richardson, for their kind offices in aiding the President 

 to secure it. . 



1851. In January of this year, two very remarkable Indian children, a boy and a girl, 

 dwarfs, were exhibited in Boston and other cities of the United States, under the name of 

 the Aztec children. They were quite small, of nearly the same size, and having much 

 vivacity, drew the attention of crowds to visit them. As it was claimed that they belonged 

 to a race of similar beings found in Central America, they became objects of scientific 

 examination. Dr. J. Mason Warren, after studying their characteristics, read a paper 

 in which Avere presented his conclusions respecting them, viz.: 



1. That these children are possessed of a very low degree of mental and physical 

 organization, but are not idiots of the lowest grade. 



2. That they probably originated from parents belonging to some of the mixed Indian 

 tribes. 



