Annual Meeting.] 
284 
[May 6, 
Report of the Board of Directors of the Natural History 
Gardens and Aquaria, Samuel H. Scudder, Chairman. 
The Board of Directors of the Natural History Gardens and 
Aquaria was established by the Society at its first January meet- 
ing in the present year and its members were chosen by the Coun- 
cil on January 14. At the present time, therefore, it has to 
report upon the work of only a few months. Fortunately the 
Board inherited the result of the labors of the Council and its 
Committees and of the Society during the past three or four 
years ; and in these years a very large amount of preliminary 
work had been finished, in deliberation and elaboration of plans, 
in consultation and correspondence with the Park Commissioners, 
and in the fundamental reorganization of the Society itself — a 
work which could not be done wisely without careful and full 
discussion ; indeed none but those who were themselves engaged 
in this work can be aware of the time and thought given freely to 
the interests of the Society by busy men. The organization and 
appointment of a Board of Directors has now concentrated the 
direction of the new work the Society had resolved to undertake. 
Before its appointment, agreements had been made with the 
Park Commissioners by which three distinct parcels of land 
within their control had been reserved for the Society’s use, for 
the establishment severally of a Marine Aquarium, a Fresh 
Water Aquarium, and a Natural History Garden, which the 
Society could occupy as soon as its friends should contribute for 
the support of the undertaking a guarantee fund of two hundred 
thousand dollars ; with the proviso that as soon as one third of 
this sum had been raised operations might begin at the Marine 
Aquarium at City Point. It had been further decided by the 
Society that at least one half of the sums offered in support of 
the Gardens should be funded as a perpetual endowment, that 
. every available precaution might be taken to ensure the Society 
against involving itself in debt, and that the Gardens should not 
be wholly dependent upon gate fees. To still further encourage 
the enterprise, and by the same instrument that created the 
Board of Directors, the Society provided the machinery for 
