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94. Interested and self-sacrificing members remained, but they were not professional scientists. The attack surprised some, disgusted others, discouraged more. A few brave workers kept their hands on the work. Among them the curator was indefatigable. The care of the collections was but a small part of his labors. Besides that he had many of the cares of correspondence and of the library. He it was who encouraged the young members of the Agassiz Associations. To make the academy useful to a larger company than its own membership, he organized and delivered courses of popular lectures to the children of the public schools; these were given at the academy, and were illustrated by its collections. Classes from the different schools had their set times for these lectures, and the result of them was encouraging. The experiment might well be tried at other places.

While not directly an academy enterprise, it is certain that its work and influence led to the holding of the second annual convention of the Agassiz Associations of the United States at Davenport in 1886. There were then two flourishing chapters of the "A. A." in the city, one at the high school and the other in the grammar schools; the combined membership was about seventy. That the active young members of these chapters drew a large amount of their interest from the academy is beyond doubt. The meeting at Davenport was a great success, and young scientists throughout the United States were stimulated by it.

With the death of Charles E. Putnam and the later removal of the patient curator to Minneapolis, the little force of workers was still further reduced. The one thing that held the organization together beyond all others was the publication with the mother love, erecting a monument, behind it. In 1886 the publication fund was begun with a gift from Charles Viele, of Evansville, Indiana, of fifty dollars. From that time the idea of