wrote 
an Address to the Peopl 
Every citizen of the western country must feel the 
necessity of a speedy development of our mineral resources. 
To find beneath our soil an adequate supply of the various 
minerals which are now imported at an enormous expense, 
[he meant simply from other parts of the country] must be 
regarded by all as a matter of first and greatest import- 
ance. The Managers [of the Western Museum Society] are 
anxious to be instrumental in the advancement of this use- 
and 
public. 6 
And the Western Academv of Natural Sciences of St. Louis 
an 
country are as yet but slightly known; the immense mineral re- 
sources that it possesses also need development, for the little 
already learned of them justifies the belief that when so de- 
and manufactures 
of the West;' 7 
Then, also, in the early 
as it had 
xu^u , AJ.9U , XU tUC ecu. Xjr IIJ-AA^ fc-^i^iii*** ^^ J r 
been in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, it was a 
part of the 
knowledgeabl 
and 
Samuel Morton 
Daniel Drake and George Engelmann were the nineteenth century 
counterparts of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others 
who banded toe-ether to form the American Philosophical Society 
areer had well -developed 
Finally, there was close association between tnese naiurax 
history societies and academies of science and the members of 
the medical profession. Partly this was because the doctor was 
something of a natural scientist through his study of anatomy 
and materia medica. He also learned something about chetn 
mineralogy and other sciences through his training. J^at 
"lore, most men attracted to a medical < 
curiosities, and were thus led to inquire into fields reiaiea 
to medicine: the study of plants, for example. 
As a result of these factors, academies of science and 
natural history societies came into existence, but as nas oe 
said, these factors were not unique to the Middle Vest, but 
»ere present in the founding of societies in Europe, ^nglana, 
and in the United States. So far as is known, the ^^^^""^l^^ 
societies were founded in the Middle West in the period up to 
the beginning of the Civil War: 
West 
1818 
"estern Museum Society, Cincinnati . . '.':„'li' ' . . 1835 
Western Academy of Natiiral Sciences of Cincinnati. • • ^g^Q 
western Academy of Natural Sciences of St. Louis . . 
234 
