Annual Report.) 2 [May 7. 



diminish our numbers. Nevertheless, as from sister Societies 

 reports of similar decrease in the interest of their meetings 

 reach us, we must believe that the causes referred to cannot 

 wholly account for the fact in our own case. There seems to 

 be a feeling growing up among naturalists that Society meet- 

 ings are unnecessary; they often do not care to hear the 

 results of studies in fields outside of their own specialties, or 

 they prefer to read the papers printed in a Society's publica- 

 tions, rather than to hear what is often an unsatisfactory oral 

 abstract of their contents. But whatever the causes may be, 

 it can hardly be doubted that the meetings, if rendered inter- 

 esting, would do much to create and foster a taste for the 

 study of Nature among our members, and I earnestly hope 

 that your attention may be given to a subject I believe so 

 important. 



Four courses of " Lowell Lectures " have been given during 

 the winter, and a fifth, a course on Comparative Anatomy, 

 by Mr. B. Waterhouse Hawkins, is in progress. The first 

 course, The Principles of Zoology, by Prof. Edw. S. Morse, 

 had an average audience of sixty persons ; the second, Min- 

 eralogy, by Mr. L. S. Burbank, forty persons ; the third, 

 Evenings with the Microscope, by the Rev. E. C. Bolles, two 

 hundred and fifty persons ; and the fourth, Chemical and 

 Physical Geology, by Prof. T. Sterry Hunt, one hundred and 

 fifty persons. Mr. Hawkins' lectures have had, thus far, an 

 average attendance of fifty. 



The " Teachers' School of Science " has unfortunately been 

 necessarily suspended this winter, but it is to be hoped, will 

 be again in operation next season. The course of instruction 

 in Botany by Dr. Farlow was completed last June, and the 

 number of teachers attending remained undiminished to the 

 end. The value of the school in advancing the study of 

 Natural History can not be overestimated. 



We have published since the last Annual Meeting, two 

 numbers of the Memoirs, one on the embryology of Limulus 

 Polyphemus, by Dr. A. S. Packard, Jr., and a description of 



