5o Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



commencing Friday evening, January 6th, iS88. These 

 lectures have been instructive and popular, the attend- 

 ance proving too large for comfortable accommodation in our 

 somewhat restricted quarters. It has been found that we have an 

 abundance of excellent and superior talent to call on in our midst, 

 and invitations to lecture by the Society have been most generously 

 responded to. The thanks of the Society should be given to Mr. 

 Charles B. Going, Mr. George Bullock, Dr. B. Merrill Ricketts, 

 Prof. Joseph F. James, Prof. Amos R. Wells, Dr. D. S. Young, 

 Mr. Chas. Dury, Dr. Walter S. Christopher, Dr. F. W. Langdon, 

 and Dr. A. B. Thrasher for their services so cheerfully rendered, 

 and for their able contributions to the entertainment and in- 

 struction of our townspeople. 



With all the work of the Society in various ways, the exhibit 

 as to its financial condition at this time, the close of our fiscal year, 

 is good. At the opening of the year we had a balance over from 

 the preceding year of $342 in the hands of our Treasurer of income 

 appropriated to be applied to the current expenses of the Society. 

 This year we have a balance over of something more than .$989 to 

 be passed over to the expenditure of the Society for the coming 

 year. It perhaps might be a wisj policy to set aside, say, the sum 

 of $500 of this for a permanent investment to increase the endow- 

 ment fund of the Society. 



It is found, as said, that the Society is steadily growing 

 in public favor, through its lyceum classes and its course of 

 winter lectures, independently of its character as a grand Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, affording the means of scieniific ref- 

 erence in all the departments thereof. The Society is becoming 

 not only an honor to our town, but of comparative worth with 

 those of the great cities. And this being so, we want more space 

 for a better arrangement of our various branches of exhibition, and 

 this emphatically in a Jire-proof structure. We want a lecture-room 

 equal to the popular growth of taste for delightful instruction in 

 Natural History. We require class-rooms for special classes, and 

 so on. It need not be held invidious to claim that a roomy, fire- 

 proof building for a Museum of Natural History, with a commo- 

 dious lecture-room and class-rooms, should be as much a need and 

 pride of a great city such as ours, as is an Academy of Music, a 

 Museum of Fine Arts, or even as a University or the High Schools 

 themselves. And this is enforced when it is considered that the 



