sisted of a talk, illustrated with lantern slides, on the Grand Canyon. 
One-hundred people came to the March 19, 1909, meeting to hear a 
lecture entitled ‘“Birds of the Missouri Botanical Garden.’’ The highlight 
of the most popular 1913 meeting was a talk called ‘‘How Worlds are 
Formed”’ given by G.O. James. James enthralled an audience of sixty- 
nine with his knowledge of the workings of the cosmos. !° 
In addition to meetings, the Academy busied itself with publishing 
eleven volumes of the Transactions between 1903 and 1920. Many 
of the papers issued were enduring scholarly works, including Thomas 
L. Casey, ‘‘Observations on the Staphylinid Groups Aleocharinae and 
Xantholonini, Chiefly of America’’ (1906); Otto Widman, ‘“‘A 
Preliminary Catalogue of the Birds of Missouri’’ (1907); and Mary J. 
Klem, ‘‘The History of Science in St. Louis’’ (1914). 
Although he published few papers in the Transactions in the first 
two decades of the twentieth century, William Trelease was one of the 
Academy’s most active members. Trelease was born in Mt. Vernon, 
New York, in 1857. He was graduated from Cornell University with 
“A representative group of 
trees in the Mexican state of 
laxaca’’ — Illustration 
from William Trelease’s 
“The Agaveae of Guate- 
mala’’ 
