of a dozen others who worthily united with them. But some are dead^ 

 others have removed from here, and few remain to keep to the work, and 

 (this is the greatest difficulty we labor under) scarcely any have come to St. 

 Louis to step into their places, and, worse still, no new generation grows up 

 to take up the work when the pioneers of this Academy will have departed. 

 We fortunately never had to pay rent for a hall to meet in, else we 

 could not have gone on at all. Over ten years. Dr. Chas. A. Pope, and 

 through him Col. O'Fallon, both now deceased, furnished us, in the build- 

 ing of the Medical College on Myrtle Street, a hall of meeting, a Library 

 room, and a large hall for our Museum. This liberal grant was continued 

 by Prof. Hodgen when he succeeded in the possession of the building, 

 until its destruction by fire. Since then the Board of Public Schools, with 

 whom we had been long before in treaty, afforded us a temporary abode, the 

 place of meeting we now occupy, in this Polytechnic building, and gave 

 room to our books in the great library hall of the Public Schools, where 

 our volumes are now put up with, but separately from, the School Library. 



A Museum hall we have not as yet been able to obtain from the Board, 

 though hopes are held out. The consequence is that specimens flow in 

 slowly, and that they have to be kept in private hands of members until 

 they can be put up publicly. 



There are drawbacks that money could remedy. Money could build 

 up a Library, money can build up a Museum, money can, by paying com- 

 petent curators, keep it in proper condition, and make it a means of in- 

 struction and an ornament to the city. And money may, if properly 

 applied for, be obtained in so rich a city as St. Louis, where a kindred 

 institution, the Mercantile Library Association, has just celebrated its 

 25th anniversary with the most glowing prospects ©f future and increased 

 success. 



But what money cannot do is to get us men of science, men who are 

 willing to devote their labors, at least that of their leisure hours, to the 

 building up of such an Academy as we had in view fifteen years ago, and 

 still have in view, though the vista may now be more distant, though suc- 

 cess may seem to be less easily attainable, may to some doubtless even 

 appear to be impossible in this city of St. Louis. 



If we (fompare similar institutions of learning, we find in Europe that 

 they are mostly organized and kept up hy governments ; in this country, 

 those that flourish are certainly supported by cultivated public spirit, and, 

 through this spirit, by liberal private aid. The size of a city, the riches 

 of a community alone, could not do it, else splendid New York would 

 have the most magnificent institution of the kind. But quiet Philadel- 

 phia has one paramount to any in this country, with a Museum superior 

 in some points to any in the world. Sober Boston has an Academy- 

 only secondary in rank to that of the last named city, not to forget the 

 treasures of its neighboring Cambridge. Then there are numerous east- 

 ern cities and western ones too, not to speak of the struggling California 

 Academy or the new one of Kansas, boldly stepping forth on the scarcely 

 broken soil of the prairie. 



