The Chicago Academy of Sciences. 7 



reception and care, should also have a full series of the 

 specimens. Mr. Kennicott naturally desired that this 

 series should have a home in Chicago, and designated 

 the Academy as the second beneficiary. 



In the winter of the years 1863 and 1864 the affairs 

 of the museum began to assume a more definite form. 

 The value of the collections already offered, and the 

 readiness of the Smithsonian Institution to fulfill its 

 agreement as to duplicates and to add much other ma- 



EZRA B. MCCAGG. 



terial from its abundant stores, induced several promi- 

 nent citizens of Chicago to undertake the found ing o 

 a permanent and more extensive museum of natural 

 and applied sciences in this youthful metropolis of the 

 central west. 



Professor Louis Agassiz, of Harvard University, ac- 

 cepted an invitation to address a meeting of those in- 

 terested. This meeting was held February 22, 1864, at 

 the residence of Mr. Edmund Aiken. Both the lecturer 



