BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 237 



interest has been very warmly spoken of by many of them. His religious tendencies 

 were very decided. He had wished in his boyhood to go to West Point, but his mother's 

 earnest desire to the contrary had dissuaded him from this course, and his subsequent 

 tastes led him to study with the intention of entering the ministry, for which profession 

 he would seem to have been particularly fitted by nature. The young ladies of his school 

 always looked to him as a friend and adviser, and have many of them alluded feelingly 

 to the few earnest words spoken by him in the morning service as of more value to 

 them than all the ordinary instruction in the school. 



Mr. Emerson's interest in the Society has always been very strong ; manifested to a 

 greater or less degree by his presence at meetings and by occasional participation in the 

 proceedings. His last prominent appearance before the Society was in 1874, when he de- 

 livered the memorial address upon Louis Agassiz. 



The history of the Society has now been traced from its formation to its present proud 

 position as one of the leading scientific institutions of the world. We have dwelt upon 

 the reasons that endangered its continued success in the early period of its existence, and 

 have witnessed the untiring devotion of its members, some of whom gave voluntarily, 

 years of life to its service. . We have seen too that only by the large donations and 

 bequests of its great benefactors did it escape the fate of the Linnaean Society which pre- 

 ceded it, and of many other similar societies not sustained by government aid, and de- 

 pending on the unpaid labor and contributions of their members. That these gifts were 

 mainly due to a recognition of the disinterested devotion of the members of the Society to 

 the work undertaken by them, and of the importance of that work as an educational and 

 elevating influence in the community, is unquestionably true, markedly in the case of the 

 largest benefactor of all, Dr. William J. Walker, who, through Dr. Jeffries Wyman, for 

 whom he had great regard, and others, made himself well acquainted with the leading 

 members of the Society, and with their designs and purposes in the matter of educating 

 the community in natural history, before making it the recipient of his bounty. 



It becomes the members of the Society, especially such as have been instrumental in 

 shaping its destiny, to ask whether it has met the reasonable expectations of its founders. 

 Have their hopes for its growth and its influence been fulfilled ? As an associate with the 

 original members, and as having been acquainted to a considerable degree with their 

 thoughts and feelings, the writer unhesitatingly answers Yes ! far beyond their most san- 

 guine hopes and expectations. Not that they limited in their own minds the possibility of 

 achievement, but they simply had no conception that in the lifetime of any of them the 

 Society would have one of the best structures iu the world for exhibition, with collections 

 of great magnitude in all the departments of natural history, unequalled in arrangement 

 for instruction ; or that it would carry on such educational work as has been done, and is 

 now doing, through the Teachers' School of Science and other instrumentalities. 



Nor does it less become the members to ask, especially in view of the fact that for fur- 

 ther progress in the work carried on by them they will yet be obliged to rely on additional 

 aid, whether the Society has faithfully administered the trusts reposed in its care; and 

 whether the wishes of those who endowed it with means by which it has become what it 

 is, have been fully regarded in the use of the property placed at its disposal. 



