6 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



t^estions of the last Curator of Mineralogy have been acted upon 

 during the ])ast year, though I think the Society would have done 

 well to see that a collection of typical rocks^ minerals and petro- 

 logical specimens, such as ripple marks, mud cracks, rain drop 

 impressions, and so on, was arranged for display. This depart- 

 ment, too, should be made of jjractical use. Examples of the 

 \arious forms of granite, S)'enite and gneiss, might have enabled 

 the paid inspectors of our coming granite pavements to perform 

 their wo'-k with something like intelligence. 



Since my last report the room devoted to Uotan}- has l)een 

 htted up, as your C'urator of IJotany will inform you, and three 

 rooms on the first Ooor in the rear of the building have been given 

 up to the Photographic Section and admirably arranged, of this 

 the Curator of Photography can inform you, as it has been done 

 under his supervision and that of the Secretary of the Section, Mr. 

 E. J. Carpenter. 



Two valuable donations have been received during the year 

 which deserve special mention. One of these is a collection of 

 fifty paintings of Fungi of North America, painted by Mrs. A. P. 

 Morgan. They are in oil, and are accurate scientifirally, and 

 beautiful artistically. They have been framed, and now decorate 

 the walls of our building. The other donation was one of thirty- 

 eight photographs of Western scenery received from the United 

 States Geological Survey. These represent views in Colorado, 

 Utah, New Mexico and the Yellowstone region, and would be 

 ornamental if framed and hung upon our walls, as they should be. 



The collections have been viewed by numbers of citizens and 

 strangers, and have been used to a certain extent by the schools, 

 but not so freely as in previous years, because, perhaps, the 

 teachers have not taken the pains to come with the scholars. But 

 on two occasions during the year there was an especially large 

 number of visitors and guests of the Society. One of these occa- 

 sions was the celebration of the birthday of Louis Agassiz on May 

 28th. On this occasion Dr. James A. Henshall read by invitation 

 a eulogy on Agassiz which was afterward printed in full in the 

 Journal of the Society.* At the conclusion of the reading of this 

 paper and of a poem by Mrs. R. Murdoch Hollingshead, the 

 company spent a ])leasant hour in examining the objects exhibited 

 under -i number of microscopes loaned by the Society members 

 and others. 



*Vol. \'ni.. p. I2g, July, 1SS5. 



