If the project be undertaken, it cannot be well begun without 
organization, and the only and proper organization to undertake 
the work, is the Newport Natural History Society. Seemingly, 
it would best meet the proper object of such a society ; and it 
would certainly give the Society a' claim, not only upon the grati¬ 
tude, but upon the support of the public. It would give the 
association something to do and something to care for; and 
societies, like individuals, are always better and do better, when 
with constant employment. Lack of a definite object ruins both 
the society and the individual, and more harm is done by being 
without a practical object than by the undertaking of too many 
objects. Nothing worth the having comes of itself. Everything 
good requires an effort, whether the good proposed be of a society 
or of an individual. From the Newport Natural History Society 
we have a right to expect some public benefit. When it shall 
have secured us a public aquarium, our expectations will happily 
be realized, and we will look to its accomplishment, not merely 
as a substantial future benefit, but as a mark of present progress. 
With this dawn of improvement, with this outward show of 
beneficial material prosperity, there will come up the desire for 
that which is superior to external objects, new wants of a higher 
nature and a greater desire for cultured association. In seeking to 
establish intimate relations between ourselves and the great world 
of science around us, we are partaking of that progressive spirit 
of the age which animates our own people in common with the 
people of the most civilized portions of the earth, which is every¬ 
where demanding as its best end, improved means of popular 
education, and which is finding it in many ways, but in no way 
more perfectly than in organizations studiously working for public 
enlightenment. 
