lxiv : Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 
at a higher point (380) than ever before (2938, seven years ago), 
although death has claimed more than the usual number of devoted 
and energetic members—T. Griswold Comstock, James B. Gazzam, 
Henry August Hunicke and Joseph Spiegelhalter. 
By generous contributions from a large number of members, the 
Council have been enabled to add $2,500.00 to the treasury balance 
brought forward from last year and by withdrawal from the current 
revenue they have increased this to a total of $3,500.00, which has 
been added to the endowment of the Academy—thus replacing in full 
a gradual shrinkage of this reserve incident to the increased expenses 
necessitated by maintaining our present home. A separate account 
has been opened for the endowment and a vote recorded that the 
income from it, only, is applicable to current expenses; and the 
Treasurer tonight reports a balance of $231.15 in the general treasury 
after the expenses of the year have been met, in addition to the 
endowment which through further gifts from members, apart from 
the earned interest, now stands at $7,400.00. This should encourage us 
to further effort in the same direction. 
Though it is very gratifying to your officers to be able to present 
this evidence of a sane financial administration of the business affairs 
intrusted to them, I should not wish to give the impression that their 
task has been an easy one, or to be understood to indicate that atten- 
tion to book-keeping is the only obligation to be met by their suc- 
cessors in office. On the contrary, an active membership watchfully 
sustained at not less than its present number, and the derivation of 
all possible revenue from sharing our meeting-place with others, are 
needed to enable your Council, year after year, to report that we have 
lived within our means even by the practice of the most rigid econ- 
omy. The decent habitability of our building calls for a considerable 
immediate and a regular annual expenditure for renovations—that 
have been left, thus far, for a more favorable time, only imperatively 
necessary structural repairs having been made since we have occu- 
pied the building. The most direct way of meeting these and similar 
pressing current needs lies in a further increase of membership. 
When even they have been surely provided for, provision will have 
been made for maintenance only, and that on a basis not commensurate 
with the purposes of the Academy. 
From its foundation, the organization has enjoyed an honorable 
and enviable reputation as a center of scientific publication. When it 
had few members and met as a tenant-at-will, this reputation was 
made and sustained through oft-repeated contributions of money; and 
the addresses of its early Presidents abound in appeals for means 
wherewith to nourish this, its soul. More numerously constituted, 
and in its own home, its need in this direction is as great as in its 
darkest days. Your retiring officers are able to report that while the 
responsibility has been theirs, no worthy paper offered has been 
refused publication; but partly because of the absence of visible 
funds for publication, the papers so offered this year have been neither 
long nor numerous. It would be wrong to assume that those who 
now go into office can this year issue all of the papers that may be 
