24 



and its environment, within the next ten years, it will amply 

 justify our proceedings today. 



By 1879, after an interval of eleven years from the actual 

 dissolution of the old society, a virtually new situation had 

 arisen in science, and especially in scientific education. Un- 

 der the influence of Darwin and Agassiz and Huxley a trans- 

 forming wave of progress was sweeping through college and 

 school — a wave whose strong upward swing was a joy to those 

 fortunate enough to ride on its crest, but which smothered 

 miserably many an unfortunate whose feet were mired in marsh 

 mud. This wave reached central Illinois in the early seven- 

 ties with the effect to bring about, in 1875, a summer school 

 of natural history at the State Normal School — only two years, 

 it will be noticed, after the first session of the Agassiz school 

 at Penikese. Wilder, of Cornell, and W. S. Barnard, just 

 back from Europe with a doctor's degree, were members of 

 its teaching staff, together with Burrill, of the State Univer- 

 sity, Thomas, the state entomologist, and the present writer, 

 who was also director of the school. Besides an abundance of 

 living plants and animals of our own environment, we had 

 great boxes and barrels of marine material in large variety, 

 some of it received alive, secured by a most active collector 

 engaged for the purpose, who scoured the New England coast 

 for us from Portland to Buzzard's Bay. This school was a 

 notable success, except that the Illinois instructors all worked 

 for nothing and paid their own expenses, but the Centennial 

 Exposition of 1876 deranged plans for its immediate continu- 

 ance. In 1878, however, a second equally successful session 

 was held, at the close of which its students spontaneously or- 

 ganized themselves into a natural history society, and appoint- 

 ed a committee of correspondence to extend its membership 

 and enlarge its scope. As a consequence of the numerous and 



