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Natural History, which was eminently successful, and was 
the introduction to my addressing many thousands of the 
most intelligent classes in the various cities between New 
York and Chicago; this successful expression of my opinion 
on the advantage of combining the Natural Sciences with 
Education, caused me to be employed by the then Commis- 
sioners of Central Park here in your city, where I was to 
revive the Ancient History of the Harth, by the most suita- 
ble and substantial illustrations of its earliest inhabitants. 
A description of the nature of this engagement is contained 
in a brief letter in the 12th Report of the Board of Commis- 
sioners for Central Park, together with my reply, severally 
dated the 2d and 9th May. This correspondence is followed 
by a detailed Report of the work entrusted to my design and 
execution, up to the 19th Feb., 1869. This first Report was 
hopeful to me, and apparently satisfactory to the Commis- 
sioners and to the public at large. The first six months of 
my first year’s engagement as shown in the Report alluded to, 
were occupied in comparing the contents of four’ various 
Museums and their Collections in reference to the fossil re- 
mains of Ancient America, as it had been decided by the 
Commissioners that my restorations should be confined in the 
first instance to those forms locally interesting. 
I was made aware of the barrenness of the spot on which 
I had to commence my search for materials, by a little inci- 
dent that occurred on one of the occasions when I was 
lecturing at Brooklyn, where a bone was placed in my hand 
by a gentleman who was under the impression that its con- 
cave ends indicated its belonging to a Reptile. I was anxious 
to compare it with a group of animals to which I supposed 
it to belong, but neither at Brooklyn nor in New York, was 
to be found any specimen of Natural History, Ancient or 
Recent, with the exception of a skeleton of the Imsh Elk, 
(which your President had then recently received at the 
School of Mines) and some bones of a horse at a celebrated 
veterinary surgeon’s, who happened to be out, and his collec- 
tion inaccessible when I went to see it the day before I left 
New York. 
