After the Civil War, the Corps of Topographical Engineers gave 
way to civilian explorers such as John Wesley Powell. Powell and others, 
among them Clarence King and Ferdinand Hayden (who had once 
gathered specimens in Nebraska for the Academy), completed the in- 
ventory of the West started by the Army. Unlike their military 
predecessors, this new generation of explorers had specialized training 
obtained in European schools or in new science departments attached 
to American universities. 
Many of these new professional scientists went to work on state 
geological surveys. After the first Missouri Geological Survey in 1853, 
another, more comprehensive one began in 1870 and a third started 
five years later. Academy members became involved in all three, and 
they contributed to the knowledge of Missouri’s geology.*! 
Men of learning all over the world recognized the unique position 
of the Academy of Science of St. Louis in relation to the geology and 
natural history of the American West. Scientists in the East and abroad 
frequently asked for specimens and information gathered west of the 
Mississippi by members and their collaborators. Jules Marcou, a Swiss 
scientist, for instance, contacted the Academy in 1858 requesting 
members to help him with his research. He wrote: 
My endeavors at Geological maps are very crude and imperfect, and 
T earnestly desire that the learned Geologists of the West may make them 
more correct, and give them the form that may approximate them more 
nearly to the truth.42 
Such acknowledgment from so far away must have been gratify- 
ing, as no doubt was the recognition given the St. Louis group by their 
American colleagues. A demonstration of that recognition came in 
August 1878, when the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science held its annual meeting in St. Louis as the Academy’s guest.43 
The founders of the Academy of Science of St. Louis created an 
association that emulated their contemporaries in the East and in Europe. 
They also recognized the importance of science in exploring and ex- 
ploiting the newly-acquired territories in the West. 
Through its first twenty-five years, the Academy lived with and 
flourished under the legacy of manifest destiny. It worked closely with 
fur traders, explorers, and scientists devoted to the exploitation of the 
West and to the promotion of westward expansion. In this, the second 
science academy in St. Louis was not much different from the first. 
But the Academy of Science was different from its ancestor in that while 
it performed its ‘‘manifest destiny’’ role, it also succeeded in 
disseminating information on a wide scale. 
Whereas the Western Academy never published anything of note 
in its entire seven-year life, the Academy of Science in its first four 
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