1888.] 523 [Special Meeting. 



Special Meeting, March 28, 1888. 



The President, F. W. Putnam, in the chair. 



The President stated that the meeting had been called to con- 

 sider the following vote of the Council. 



Voted, That the Council, having duly considered the correspond- 

 ence which has passed between a committee of our own number 

 and the Park Commissioners of the City of Boston, as set forth in 

 the Report of the said Commissioners just published, asks the So- 

 ciety to authorize the Council to take such steps as shall be neces- 

 sary to secure to the City of Boston a Natural History Garden 

 and Aquaria which shall then be under the direction of the Society. 



After a short address the President invited the Society to listen 

 to a report on the proposed garden by Mr. Samuel H. Scudder of 

 the committee of the Council. 



Mr. Scudder said : 



The idea of a zoological garden in Boston is by no means a new 

 one, and, as I chance to have been connected, from the beginning, 

 with the movement to establish one, it falls to my lot to give a slight 

 historical sketch of what has been done. Much impressed with the 

 interest attaching to the gardens in Europe during a visit to some 

 of the principal cities, I brought the matter to the attention of the 

 Council twenty odd years ago, and a committee was at that time 

 appointed to consider the subject and to report at a suitable time. 

 That committee has been in existence, though a portion of the time 

 in a moribund condition, ever since. No entry appears to have 

 been made on the records at that time, but some of the subsequent 

 revivals of the same do appear. One occasion for renewing the 

 subject came at the time when our Boston public park sj'stem w r as 

 first broached, and at a meeting of the Society June 3, 1874, the 

 Council was asked to appoint a new committee to "urge before the 

 Park Commissioners and the City Council the importance of es- 

 tablishing a zoological garden and aquarium in connection with one 

 of the proposed public parks." The committee was again revived 

 about two years ago with some alteration of its members (which 

 have remained practically the same since the initiation of the pro- 

 ject) and latterly has held several conferences with the Park Com- 

 missioners, the result of w r hich appears in the correspondence which 

 has been printed in the recent report of the latter body. 



