12 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE 



The expression that the funds of the Society be devoted to enlarging as well as securing 

 the collection denotes the existence of a vague hope at least of renovation. 



The election of officers was made, as in former years. 



1823. In March of this year a meeting was called by the Society, and the committee 

 appointed in August of the previous year relative to the collection reported, that they had 

 offered the whole of it to the Boston Athenaeum, upon condition that suitable rooms should 

 be provided for its reception and preservation, but that the Trustees had declined to accept 

 it ; that they had subsequently offered it to the Corporation of Harvard College or to the 

 Board of Visitors of the Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History, who jointly 

 accepted the offer, agreeing to erect a building for the collection and to grant to the mem- 

 bers of the Society free access to the collection and to the Botanic Garden. 



This report after consideration was acted upon by a vote that the conditions on which 

 the Corporation of Harvard College and the Board of Visitors of the Massachusetts 

 Professorship of Natural History, propose to accept the cabinet of this Society, be acceded 

 to ; and the committee were requested to make the transfer. This was done, and the 

 balance of cash in the hands of the Treasurer, $264.29, was also included in the transfer. 



A vote was finally passed that all subscriptions and assessments not collected be can- 

 celled. Thus came to an end the Linnaean Society so far as exertion for the furtherance 

 of the objects of its existence was concerned. It yet remained a corporate body, and 

 years after, upon the formation of the Boston Society of Natural History, it w ( as once more 

 called together by its Secretary for the purpose of recovering if possible from Harvard 

 College such part of the collection as yet remained worth removing, in order to present 

 it to the new society. This reclamation was made on the ground that the College had 

 failed entirely to comply with the conditions made at the time of the transfer ; no building 

 having been erected, and proper care not having been given for its preservation as a 

 collection for promoting the study of natural history. In the sketch which follows of 

 the doings of the Boston Society of Natural History, it will be found that very little of 

 the really extensive and valuable collection of the Linnzean Society came into its possess- 

 ion, though all that remained of it was given up by the College. It had gone to ruin for 

 want of care, as hundreds of earlier collections had before it, and as hundreds will 

 hereafter, if the views which the history of the Linnaean Society are calculated to incul- 

 cate do not prevail in their aims and purposes. 



That these views may be presented and dwelt upon has been the motive of giving 

 so full an account of the doings of this Society, as its experience so well illustrates their 

 truth. As stated in an earlier page, if success did not crown the efforts made 

 by the members to build up a permanent institution, the fault was not so much in them, 

 as in the fact that they undertook more than it was possible for men engaged in 

 professional or business life to accomplish, however zealous and devoted they might be. 

 The views referred to and which it is thought desirable to inculcate, may be given 

 in a few paragraphs. They are not new, for the same ideas may be found expressed in an 

 address delivered before the Linnasan Society of London, in 1867, by its President, George 

 Bentham, F.R.S., and also in an article by Dr. H. A. Hagen, published in the 

 American Naturalist (Volume x, pp. 80 and 135). They are as follows: 



