92 SOC. OF AM. TAXIDERMISTS, ANNUAL REPORT. 
ever you visit the city call at my laboratory, and I will help you 
out of special difficulties gratis, as experience shall make you sen- 
sible of them ; and when you shall have mounted one hundred 
birds you will throw aw'ay ninety-nine of them, keeping the first 
bird you ever mounted without assistance, and then begin to pre- 
serve your work.’’ Suffice it to say, an experience of forty years 
and more since that time has verified his prediction. 
Beginning witli such specimens of mammals, birds, reptiles, 
and fishes as the near vicinity of my school-room brought within 
range of my gun, and with the pressure upon me of the charge 
of an unfunded institution, averaging during those years more 
than two hundred pupils, at an average age of eighteen years, I 
spent all my leisure time, both day and night, in the field and in 
my laboratory till I had well nigh exhausted the locality, with 
the result of furnishing my lecture-room, within twelve years, 
with several hundred mounted specimens, to my own and my pu- 
pils’ great satisfaction. The following extract from Prof. Louis 
Agassiz’ great work, “ Contributions to the Natural History of 
the United States,” Yol. II, 1857, p. 494, will perhaps be of some 
instruction and encouragement to young amateurs and teachers. 
“ It is a great mistake,” he says, “ to suppose that large mu- 
seums are necessary for the study of natural history, and that 
show specimens from distant countries add much to the interest 
of a scientific collection. I deliberately assert that there is not 
a school-house in the United States, in the immediate vicinity of 
which it would not be easy to make, in a few years, a collection 
of native specimens sufficient to illustrate the fundamental prin- 
ciples of any branch of natural history. Nay, it is not too 
much to add that such collections would contribute greatly to 
the advancement of science, if simple catalogues of their con- 
tents were published from time to time. I am satisfied from my 
own experience that every such collection could, in less than ten 
years, be made worthy of a careful examination by even the 
most critical professional naturalists, and would afford to the 
teachers and pupils a source of ever new interest in their walks, 
and of ever increasing extension of their knowledge and ability 
to observe. In Massachusetts a very good beginning has already 
been made in several schools, and most successfully by Mr. J. 
W. P. Jenks, in Middleboro.” 
