6 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



from the county and soon after died. His many services, 

 titly commemorated in our records, at the time, have not 

 been forgotten. 



The Institute has felt called on, during tiie year, in 

 common with other like bodies, to declare its views on 

 several public questions closely allied with its work. In 

 these cases, your Executive Committee has ventured to 

 submit resolves at regular meetings of the Institute, and 

 these have, without exception, met the approval of the 

 members present. In this way the voice of the Society 

 has been raised against the destruction of the Frigate 

 Constitution ; in favor of acquiring for a State Park the 

 Stage Fort property on Gloucester Harbor ; and in fjivor 

 of a proposal, submitted by the Swiss Government to 

 the Universal Postal Congress just holden at Washington, 

 for admitting to the mails of the world scientific speci- 

 mens at the same postal rates as samples of merchandise. 



The Institute in the early period of its career derived 

 great advantage from a system of field-meetings adopted, 

 as Dr. Wheatland said at a field-meeting at Manchester, 

 July 18, 1856, from the practice of the Berwickshire 

 Naturalists' Club in Scotland. Shall they be revived? 

 It is not unlikely that a practical test will be applied this 

 summer, in the form of invitations to visit two or three 

 attractive localities. In that case it will devolve upon 

 the field-meeting committee, which has been a sinecure 

 for several years past, to determine how far under the 

 greatly changed conditions now existing — when so many 

 towns, twelve at least, have local societies of their own, 

 and when facilities for travel are vastly increased and 

 extended, — the attempt to revive field-meetings is expe- 

 dient and practicable. 



Donations have poured in upon us in such volume as 

 to tax the utmost capacity of our available space; and 

 a generous rear-extension of our building has become as 



