118 NOTES ON THE CONDITION OP ZOOLOGY 



1st, came into existence under the support and patronage of 

 the Essex Institute, whose name it bore upon its cover 

 during its earliest years, having in reality been founded 

 and edited by one of its members. 



At that time the newspapers recognized science by 

 publishing now and then short paragraphs about five- 

 legged kittens, or accounts of the hackneyed drop of 

 water with its myriads of animalcules disporting within. 

 Now, the freshest results of science published in tech- 

 nical language appear side by side with the gossip of the 

 town. A comet appearing then was dismissed with a par- 

 agraph of a few lines or an apostrophe in the poet's corner. 

 Now, the daily paper publishes a whole broadside about 

 the subject from the pen of some able astronomer and 

 illustrated by diagrams. It is safe to say that the daily 

 newspapers of the country in a single day publish more 

 strictly scientific matter than could be brought together 

 in all the pages of a scientific library of fifty years ago. 

 At that time a few men with unvarying monotony akin to 

 an inherited instinct were recording the daily winds and 

 temperatures ; now, we have an organized meteorological 

 bureau whose weather predictions have excited the ad- 

 miration of the world. 



At that time the science of archaeology was not born. 

 Evidences of the high antiquity of man had been brought 

 forward only to be rejected as contrary to Jewish chro- 

 nology ; now, it is the most vigorous and aggressive of 

 all the sciences, and one of Essex County's gifted sons, 

 Mr. Putnam, whose name has been so intimately iden- 

 tified with the work of this society, is at the head of an 

 endowed museum of archaeology at Cambridge, and is 

 for the first time teaching the country the proper and only 

 way of exploring the mysterious mounds of the West. 

 His discoveries thus far have revealed such rich fields 



