Page:A Short History of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1909).djvu/28

16 [sic] of his intention, announced that they would pay $120 per annum toward the expenses of publication and $480 per annum for the assistance of poor young men desiring to study natural history. The sums named were regularly paid until February, 1872, when $10,000 in bonds were transferred to the Academy. Mrs. Clara J. Moore, in 1888, added $5,000 to the fund and, in 1893, she gave $5,000 for the assistance of young women similarly inclined. Sixty-nine men and four women have been assisted by the endowment, some of them attaining dignified positions as teachers, geologists, biologists and authors.

The same year the Academy lost the services of the Treasurer, George W. Carpenter, who had served in that capacity most discreetly for thirty-four years. He was ever generous in his encouragement of young naturalists, Mr. Thomas Meehan, for example, being always warm in his acknowledgement of indebtedness to him.

The Academy entered on its second half century under the brightest prospects and with a most gratifying record of honorable achievements. The year 1862 was made notable by the work of illustrious veterans who were still active, and by what there was reason to expect from their successors. But few of the great collections which have since come into prominence were in existence. The Smithsonian Institution was then rather a distributing agency than a storehouse of scientific material. The United States Government had not become, through the Agricultural Department, the National Museum, the Fish Commission and the Geological Surveys, one of the largest publishing concerns in the world, and a formidable rival in the publication of scientific matter, so that the work of Gill, Meek, Hayden, Coues, Stimpson, Kennicott, Yarrow and others in Washington and elsewhere, was issued promptly and accurately in the pages of the Proceedings and Journal.

Leidy had suspended for a time his delightful field and laboratory notes and was pursuing his paleontological studies in a little dark and dusty room on the first floor of the museum. These he continued until driven out of the field by the wrangling of Cope and Marsh, when his microscopic studies were carried on more comfortably at home.

John Cassin had held for years such undisputed sway over the