continued to collect after the catastrophe, but for many years, new ac- 
ca seemed inadequate substitutes for those obliterated by the 
blaz 
"The Academy’s library, also stored in the dispensary, survived 
the fire only slightly damaged. Like the museum collections, the library 
had by 1869 grown to an impressive size. In fact, it had the reputation 
of being the largest of its kind west of the Allegheny Mountains. 
Members added to the library by soliciting donations of books and by 
exchanging the Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
for the publications of other science societies. Joseph Henry, Secretary 
of the Smithsonian Institution, oversaw exchanges between the St. Louis 
group and foreign organizations. By 1881 the Academy’s library held 
over 3,000 books and nearly 8,000 issues of periodicals.?* 
Members of science societies in the East and abroad were eager 
to receive copies of the Academy’s Transactions, which contained 
papers on the natural history of the American West, a still largely unex- 
plored and unknown area. The Transactions also featured papers on 
the natural history of Missouri and on other local and regional topics. 
George Engelmann contributed papers on St. Louis’ annual rain- 
fall, on the stages of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, and on the town’s 
elevation above sea level. Other Academy members wrote about 
Missouri’s fossils, coal measures, lead deposits and iron industry; about 
Indian mound excavations in the Mississippi River Valley; and about 
the deep wells at the St. Louis County Insane Asylum and the Belcher 
sugar refinery.° 
One Transactions paper caused a heated debate among Academy 
members. In the first issue of the journal, Albert Koch published a paper 
on some mastodon bones he had found in Missouri.*° Koch concluded 
that humans had coexisted with the mastodon and had in fact hunted 
the great beasts. He wrote: 
I will state then, that, in the year 1859, I discovered and disinterred, 
in Gasconade county, Missouri . . . the bones of the above-named 
animals. The bones were sufficiently well preserved for me to decide, 
positively, that they belonged to Mastodon giganteus. Some remarkable 
circumstances were connected with the discovery. The greater portion 
of these bones had been more or less burned by fire. The fire had ex- 
tended but a few feet beyond the space occupied by the animal before 
its destruction; and there was more than sufficient evidence on the spot, 
that the fire had not been an accidental one, but, on the contrary, that 
it had been kindled by human agency, and, according to all appearance, 
with the design of killing the huge creature . . .*! 
To further his contention, Koch declared that he had found a large 
number of heavy stones mingled with the remains of the mastodon. He 
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