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curred, refusals to turn over to the treasurer the funds claimed 

 by the society— and these, with other confusing and discourag- 

 ing conditions, led to the withdrawal by members of gifts and 

 deposits of specimens and a falling off in the active member- 

 ship. The society finally collapsed, chiefly because of its finan- 

 cial disabilities. Since it could neither pay adequately its gen- 

 eral commissioner or its curator, nor organize its collections 

 or publish its papers from its own resources, it turned to the 

 State for aid, and found itself ultimately obliged to accept the 

 condition that its property should be transferred to the State, 

 and that its curator should be appointed by a state board, as 

 the price of continued appropriations, — which, by the way, were 

 largely drawn upon to outfit and maintain the Powell expedi- 

 tions to the far west. 



There is no doubt that this short-lived society brought a 

 body of influential public opinion to the aid of state scientific 

 and educational enterprises appearing during its existence, 

 and that it did much to stimulate a general interest in scien- 

 tific knowledge and research, and thus to hasten the introduc- 

 tion of the sciences into the public schools — influences which 

 did not cease when its own organic life was ended. It also 

 afforded to Powell the standing-ground from which he leaped 

 into fame as an explorer and won his way to a scientific career 

 of the first importance, and it left in its museum nuclear col- 

 lections which were later made useful in a revival and firm estab- 

 lishment of the original enterprise of the society, modified tO' suit 

 more modern ideals, by the State Laboratory of Natural His- 

 tory. This first state society thus gave indirect origin to the 

 state laboratory, with which the state entomologist's office be- 

 came practically identified in 1883, much as the first geological 

 survey of the state gave origin to our present state museum. 

 If our new academy do no more, proportionately to its period 



