Decembeb 27, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



893 



Laboratory of Natural History. A part of 



its original material is now in the posses- 

 sion of that institution at Urbana, a part 

 of it belongs to the State Normal School 

 at Normal, and the remainder is in the 

 State Museum of Natural History, founded 

 here in 1879, and now in charge of Pro- 

 fessor Crook as its ciirator. 



The officers of the society mainly respon- 

 sible for its establishment and growth were 

 its corresponding secretary, later called its 

 general commissioner, and the curator of 

 its museum. The former was its field 

 agent and general manager, and the latter 

 was the custodian of its collections. Its 

 first corresponding secretary was C. D. 

 Wilber, who served in that capacity until 

 1864. He subsequently became a mining 

 engineer, much consulted by western rail- 

 roads in the location and development of 

 coal lands on their grants and in their 

 neighborhoods. Its curator was for several 

 years Dr. J. A. Sewall, instructor in chem- 

 istry in the State Normal School, at Nor- 

 mal, and afterwards president of the Colo- 

 rado State University. Its second general 

 commissioner, and afterwards the second 

 curator of its museum, was Major J. W. 

 Powell, who was in its service in the latter 

 capacity when he made those remarkable 

 western explorations, and especially that 

 most remarkable expedition down the Colo- 

 rado River of the West, which gave him 

 world-wide fame and did much to make 

 him later the United States Geologist. The 

 third actual curator, serving, however, 

 nominally as Major Powell's deputy, was 

 Dr. George W. Vasey, afterwards for many 

 years botanist to the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture at Washington; and 

 the last to serve in this capacity was the 

 present writer, appointed by the State 

 Board of Education in 1872, after the state 

 had acquired the museum, and continued 

 as director of the State Laboratory of Nat- 



ural History after the change of name and 

 function finally made in 1879. 



This society came into existence at a time 

 so different from our own that we can de- 

 rive little from its experience by way of 

 either warning or instruction. Its period 

 was that of the first active exploration and 

 discovery of the scientific contents and eco- 

 nomic resources of our territory, and of the 

 first general impulse to the scientific educa- 

 tion of the people; and the society was 

 formed as an agency for a natural history 

 survey of the state, in the old sense of an 

 accumulation of museum specimens and a 

 descriptive record of its zoology, botany 

 and paleontology — meteorology and phys- 

 ical geography being nominally included, 

 also, within the scope of the society. In 

 1858 the State Geological Survey was just 

 getting on its feet, with Mr. Worthen ap- 

 pointed that year as its director. The nor- 

 mal school at Normal was the only state 

 educational institution in Illinois, and that 

 had been organized only one year. The 

 state university was not founded until nine 

 years thereafter, at which time, also, the 

 state entomologist's office was first estab- 

 lished. 



Almost none of the men engaged in the 

 work of this old society had anything ap- 

 proximating what we would now call a 

 scientific education, and very few of them 

 were what we would now call professional 

 scientists or teachers of science, and yet 

 they were evidently the pick of the state 

 in scientific ability, enthusiasm and ac- 

 tivity. Among its more efficient mem- 

 bers, besides Powell, Vasey, Worthen and 

 Thomas, already mentioned, were Benja- 

 min D. Walsh, the first state entomologist; 

 M. S. Bebb, well known for his work on the 

 willows of the United States; Dr. Oliver 

 Everett, of Dixon; James Shaw, of Mt. 

 Carroll, and Dr. Henry M. Bannister, the 

 last two assistants on the Geological Sur- 

 vey; Dr. J. W. Velie, a life-long ornitholo- 



