HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
463 
This accession came through the resolve of the Directors 
of that institution to wind up its affairs and dispose of its 
properties. The Council of the Natural History Society under- 
took the care of the Gesner Museum and bought from the 
directors the objects that had been added to the Mechanic’s 
Institute Museum * since Dr. Gesner ’s time. This Gesner- 
Institute Museum was placed chiefly in a large upper room 
of the market building, the use of which had been granted by 
the Common Council to the Natural History Society. 
Eighteen hundred and eighty-eight was an epochal year with 
the Natural History Society. In the beginning of that year we 
lost by death our president, Dr. Botsford, who, with the excep- 
tion of a few years in the seventies had presided over its delib- 
erations since its institution in 1862, and whose punctuality 
and business-like methods had helped to hold the Society 
together, in adverse as well as prosperous times. In the same 
year we lost Mr. M. Chamberlain, one of the most enthusiastic 
and able workers in the Museum. 
In the years from the re-organization (1880) to this time 
(1888) much attention was given to the needs of the school 
teachers, who had attached themselves to the Society in 
considerable numbers. For these and other members courses of 
elementary lectures in science were instituted, and eventually as 
the Associate membership grew, series of afternoon lectures were 
instituted, and managed by this class of the members. 
These latter lectures were largely in illustration of liter- 
ature and art, which thus became an important branch of the 
Society’s work. It is worth noting that in this respect it has 
followed a course parallel to that of the Mechanic's Institute, 
which was established to give instruction to artizans in the 
newly discovered sciences relating to trade and manufactures, 
but its lecture course gradually became a literary one, and the 
large lecture hall built to promote the diffusion of useful 
knowledge, was eventually turned into a theatre, and the 
famous Institute Lecture course given up. We must be careful 
to avoid this final stage in the history of the JVIechanic’s Insti- 
tute. 
