20 



curator of its museum, was Major J. W. Powell, who was in 

 its service in the latter capacity when he made those remark- 

 able western explorations, and especially that most remarkable 

 expedition down the Colorado River of the West, which gave 

 him world-wide fame and did much to make him later the 

 United States Geologist. The third actual curator, serving, 

 however, nominally as Major Powell's deputy, was Dr. George 

 W. Vasey, afterwards for many years botanist to the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, at Washington ; and the last 

 to serve in this capacity was the present writer, appointed by 

 the State Board of Education in 1872, after the State had ac- 

 quired the museum, and continued as director of the State 

 Laboratory of Natural History after the change of name and 

 function finally made in 1879. 



This society came into existence at a time so different from 

 our own that we can derive little from its experience by way 

 of either warning or instruction. Its period was that of the' 

 first active exploration and discovery of the scientific contents 

 and economic resources of our territory, and of the first gen- 

 eral impulse to the scientific education of the people ; and the 

 society was formed as an agency for a natural history survey 

 of the State in the old sense of an accumulation of museum 

 specimens and a descriptive record of its zoology, botany and 

 paleontolog}' — meteorology and physical geography being nomi- 

 nally included, also, within the scope of the society. In 1858 

 the State Geological Survey was just getting on its feet, with 

 Mr. Worthen appointed that year as its director. The normal 

 school at Normal was the only state educational institution in 

 Illinois, and that has been organized only one year. The state 

 university was not founded until nine years thereafter, at which 

 time, also, the state entomologist's office was first established. 

 Very few of Ihe men engaged in the work of this old so- 



