December 27, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



895 



that its property should be transferred to 

 the state, and that its curator should be 

 appointed by a state board, as the price of 

 continued appropriations; which, by the 

 way, were largely drawn upon to outfit and 

 maintain the Powell expeditions to the far 

 west. (Fifteen hundred dollars directly 

 appropriated by the State Board of Edu- 

 cation. ) 



There is no doubt that this short-lived 

 society brought a body of influential public 

 opinion to the aid of state scientific and 

 educational enterprises appearing during 

 its existence, and that it did much to stim- 

 ulate a general interest in scientific knowl- 

 edge and research, and thus to hasten the 

 introduction of the sciences into the public 

 schools— influences which did not cease 

 when its own organic life was ended. It 

 also afforded to Powell the standing-ground 

 from which he leaped into fame as an ex- 

 plorer, and won his way to a scientific 

 career of the first importance, and it left 

 in its museum nuclear collections which 

 were later made useful in a revival and 

 firm establishment of the original enter- 

 prise of the society, modified to suit more 

 modern ideals, by the State Laboratory of 

 Natural History. Thi,s first state society 

 thus gave indirect origin to the state labo- 

 ratory, with which the state entomologist's 

 office became practically identified in 1883, 

 much as the first geological survey of the 

 state gave origin to our present state mu- 

 seum. If our new academy do no more, 

 proportionately to its period and its en- 

 vironment, within the next ten years, it 

 will amply justify our proceedings to-day. 



By 1879, after an interval of eleven 

 years from the actual dissolution of the old 

 society, a virtually new situation had arisen 

 in science, and especially in scientific edu- 

 cation. Under the influence of Darwin and 

 Agassiz and Huxley, a transforming wave 

 of progress was sweeping through college 

 and school, a wave whose strong upward 



swing was a joy to those fortunate enough 

 to ride on its crest, but which smothered 

 miserably many an unfortunate whose feet 

 were mired in marsh mud. This wave 

 reached central Illinois in the early seven- 

 ties with the effect to bring about, in 187?, 

 a summer school of natural history at the 

 State Normal School— only two years, it 

 will be noticed, after the first session of the 

 Agassiz School at Penikese. Wilder, of 

 Cornell, and W. S. Barnard, just back from 

 Europe with a doctor's degree, were mem- 

 bers of its teaching staff, together with 

 Burrill, of the State University; Thomas, 

 the state entomologist, and the present 

 writer, who was also director of the school. 

 Besides an abundance of living plants and 

 animals of our own environment, we had 

 great boxes and barrels of marine material 

 in large variety, some of it received alive, 

 secured by a most active collector engaged 

 for the purpose, who scoured the New Eng- 

 land coast for us from Portland to Buz- 

 zard's Bay. This school was a notable suc- 

 cess, except that the Illinois instructors all 

 worked for nothing and paid their own 

 expenses; but the Centennial Exposition 

 of 1876 deranged plans for its immediate 

 continuance. In 1878, however, a second 

 equally successful session was held, at the 

 close of which its students spontaneously 

 organized themselves into a natural history 

 society, and appointed a committee of cor- 

 respondence to extend its membership and 

 enlarge its scope. As a consequence of the 

 numerous and unanimously favorable re- 

 sponses to the letters following, a confer- 

 ence was held at the office of the state geol- 

 ogist in Springfield, December 12, 1878, 

 and the secretary of this conference was 

 instructed to call a convention at Chicago 

 for the organization of a state natural his- 

 tory society. 



Some forty persons responded to the call, 

 and organized at the Palmer House, Jan- 

 uary 16, 1879, and letters were read from 



