Bouve\] 246 [March 15, 



ety that now exerts such widespread influence in the community, 

 and which is destined to still greater usefulness, if those who shall 

 come after us will be faithful to the great responsibilities soon to be 

 transmitted to them. Few of you, now having books at your com- 

 mand treating fully of every branch of Natural History; intercourse 

 with men fully able to instruct in every department of science; 

 collections of every character systematically arranged, that may be 

 consulted; can have any idea of the great want felt by those of us 

 in the days referred to, lacking all these, and also the means to ac- 

 quire them. It seemed in my own department sometimes almost a 

 hopeless task to undertake to make out a fossil species. I have 

 worked days over one fossil only to find that no accessible work or 

 collection would help me make out its specific character, and I have 

 labored for years over our early collection of fossils in order to verify 

 them, when weeks would have sufficed if the present means had 

 existed for their study. 



I will not weary you with a too full retrospect of the past. The 

 records of the early days are full of encouragement for the laborers 

 of the future. The influence of the Society was not by any means 

 limited to the advantage of those who were members, or even to 

 those who could visit its collections and listen to its speakers. At 

 the period I have referred to, already some of its active members 

 were in the field engaged in the great work suggested by the Society 

 of making a Botanical and Zoological survey of the State, which 

 resulted in the very able reports of Mr. Geo. B. Emerson, Dr. Thad- 

 deus W. Harris, Dr. D. Humphreys Storer and Dr. Augustus A. 

 Gould. 



But a new era was to dawn upon science in our country by the 

 advent of Agassiz and the establishment of the Museum of Compar- 

 ative Zoology in Cambridge. Of the influence of the latter upon 

 the well-being of our Society, there may at first have been some 

 reasonable question, though not concerning the great value of that 

 institution to science in general. Experience has, however, abund- 

 antly shown, and every day adds further testimony to the fact, that 

 not only has the cause of science throughout our whole country been 

 advanced by the establishment of that great Museum, but that this 

 Society in particular has been, and is now, being benefitted by the 

 culture which has there been given, to a degree beyond what can be 

 readily estimated. 



