No. 17 .—Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, Mag 1, 1901. 
Report of the Curator, May 1, 1901. 
The most important event to be chronicled for the past year is 
the reception of the Gurdon Saltonstall fund. This was given by 
the will of Henry Saltonstall, who bequeathed fifteen thousand dol¬ 
lars to this Society a number of years ago in a will, dated 1891, which 
went into effect after his death in 1894. This was increased by ten 
thousand dollars through the will of his wife, who died quite recently 
in 1901. The terms of these joint gifts are the same, and the reasons 
given by Mr. Saltonstall are particularly pleasing. His words are, 
“to the Boston Society of Natural History as a memorial of my 
(said) son and in gratitude for the benefit and pleasure derived by 
him from his association with the (said) Society.” Such donations 
are absolutely essential to our continued existence, but they have 
been so few and far between, with the exception of the last two 
years, that we have suffered and must continue to suffer from the 
want of an adequate income to carry any of our plans to com¬ 
pletion. Although we have the necessary collections, we are still 
as much in need of funds for the installation of a proper exhibition 
of New England natural history, a thing that does not exist in this 
region or any other, as we were two years ago. The teaching of 
the visitors to the Museum, an equally unique scheme that has been 
shown to be practicable by Dr. Grabau and others, has lately been 
abandoned because no funds existed to pay a teacher. The expo¬ 
sition of the natural history, topography, and geology of the region 
immediately around us which we call the Boston Basin would do 
more towards advancing the proper teaching of natural history in 
this region than any one movement that could be made, but this 
also cannot be completed for similar reasons. 
We have also received from Mr. Walter Hunnewell a gift of two 
thousand dollars “ in memory of his son, Willard P. Hunnewell.” 
This and Mr. and Mrs. Saltonstall’s gifts show conclusively, that the 
free policy of this Society in welcoming young people to all the 
advantages it has to offer may have material returns not contem¬ 
plated by the believers in this mode of working. 
