242 



HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE 



As to its requirements, these have partially been given in mentioning its means and 

 their inadequacy ; others equally necessary but not so pressing will be here referred to. 



It needs to build another gallery in the Museum as originally designed, in order that the 

 New England collections in the various departments may be brought together. It needs 

 means to enable it to bind thousands of volumes in its library, periodicals received 

 by exchanges, and other works which it has hitherto been unable to do. Thanks to the 

 Huntington Frothingham Wolcott fund, it will henceforth be able to take care of books 

 received, but it requires a large sum to bind those obtained in the past and which suffer 

 from want of it. 



Of its hopes, they are that it may not only be able to go on with its work, but that it 

 may progress, and that the requirements for this may not long be wanting. Doing 

 what it is in fostering the taste for a study refining and elevating in its tendencies, it feels 

 that its efforts should not be allowed to become futile through lack of necessary means to 

 continue its work without cotant struggle. 



Of its aspirations for the future, they are such as all will commend who recognize that 

 progress is a duty, viz. : That it may be able to meet the increasing call from a growing 

 community for instruction in natural history, to such as cannot avail themselves of the 

 advantages afforded otherwise, by an expansion of its laboratory and other facilities ; that 

 it may, before a long period has elapsed, be able to add an aquarial garden to its collections, 

 both for the study of the habits of a portion of the animal kingdom and as an additional 

 attraction to visitors of the Museum ; and that as these desires cannot have full fruition 

 without more extensive accommodations, that the day may not be far distant when it shall 

 possess the ability to enlarge the Museum building so as to best serve its designs and 

 purposes ; that it may also be able to publish the increasing researches of its members 

 with the illustrations they require ; which it is now by no means able to do, many me- 

 moirs being diverted to other channels of publication which would naturally be offered to 

 the Society were it able to do more than at present. 



The names of some of the most able naturalists of the country, including several of 

 the most distinguished of the age, are to be found on its roll of active members during 

 the half century, as Louis Agassiz, Jeffries Wyman, Asa Gray, Augustus A. Gould, Wm. 

 B. Rogers, Henry D. Rogers, Thomas Nuttall, Charles Pickering, D. Humphreys Storer, 

 George B. Emerson, Amos Binney, Charles T. Jackson, Thaddeus W. Harris, Count Desor. 

 Others of its members if less illustrious as scientists have been men of such excellence of 

 life and character as to have endeared them to all the community. Who that knew in 

 life Dr. Benj. D. Greene, the Rev. F. W. P. Greenwood, Dr. John Ware, Dr. Martin 

 Gay, Mr. Thomas Bulfinch, and many others worthy of mention with these, will not 

 feel that its annals have indeed been sanctified by a spirit of purity and simplicity 

 throughout all the years of the half century now closed. If anything has made the 

 writing of these pages a pleasing task to the author, it has been the contemplation of 

 such exalted worth as marked the lives and deeds of so many of his associates. This has 

 sometimes impressed him with a feeling that the atmosphere about him was hallowed by 

 their presence. 



The writer in his concluding remarks cannot do better than to commend to the govern- 

 ment of the Society, the expressive words of its great benefactor, in bequeathing to it 



