888 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts , and Letters. 
tributbr to the geology of Wisconsin. The second paper was 
“On the importance of more attention to the preservation and 
culture of the forest trees of Wisconsin,” by P. Engelmann of 
Milwaukee. During the discussion of this paper, Mr. J. G. 
Knapp of Madison stated that with the methods of lumbering 
then in vogue the white pine forests of Michigan and Wiscon¬ 
sin would be destroyed in twenty-five years. And they were. 
The third paper was “On the Coniferae of the Kocky 
Mountain region and their adaptation to the soil and 
climate of Wisconsin,” also by Pw Engelmann of Mil¬ 
waukee. As I read these papers, I fell to wondering what 
would be the added wealth of Wisconsin had their admonitions 
been heeded, and her magnificent coniferous forests were now 
in existence yielding their yearly crops. And then I thought 
of the wide prairies stretching away to the South and West 
that were partitioned with fences made of pine boards and dot¬ 
ted with houses and barns and granaries, with villages and 
towns, built of pine lumber from the North, made cheap by de¬ 
structive methods of lumbering. It was not the only time that 
Wisconsin got the short end of the bargain. 
But before attempting any review, however brief, of the 
work accomplished by the Academy, it would seem desirable to 
have some conception of its aims and objects. Let me then 
state, as clearly and succinctly as I may, the ideas, as I appre¬ 
hend them, that were operative in the minds of those who 
founded this Academy and those who have carried on its work. 
Wisconsin is one of the major states of the Union, extending as 
it does from the Great Lakes to the Great Kiver, from the pine 
forests to the prairies, dotted and 1 lined with lakes and rivers 
that discharge their waters into two of the great drainage chan¬ 
nels of the North American continent, that of the St. Lawrence 
and that of the Mississippi; a state of much geological interest, 
of mineral richness), covered with a varied and fertile soil, with 
an abundant vegetation, teeming with many and diverse forms 
of animal life, bearing upon its surface much evidence of pre¬ 
historic human habitation, and the present abiding place and 
home of a composite and self-governing people. Now, it seems 
