Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/96

88 volume of Proceedings, covering the years 1867-'75, should be printed. It was no easy task. Entertainments were given and other ways of raising money devised. A fire interfered seriously, but at last the handsome octavo volume was printed and turned over to the academy. The volume formed part of the display of women's work and achievement at the Centennial at Philadelphia in 1876. The happy result of publication upon the academy was immediately apparent. The Proceedings were sent to all parts of the world, and the library of the academy has grown almost entirely out of its exchange. The publication has not only benefited the scientific world by making known valuable original work, but it has made the academy widely known. The Proceedings have been continued up to the present time, and Volume VII is now in progress. During his lifetime the Proceedings were ever in J. Duncan Putnam's mind. Volume II was due to him, and early in 1881 he offered to turn over to the academy a complete printing outfit and to personally superintend the publication of Volume III. He did not live to complete it, and that volume is a memorial volume, the final bringing out of which is due to Mrs. Putnam. Since her son's death this lady's great desire in connection with the academy has been to see the publications continued. Her energy has never flagged, and finally she has seen the future of the Proceedings assured.

One of the notable papers in the first volume of the Proceedings dealt with the archaeological treasures found by the academy's workers in the mounds of Iowa and Illinois, not far from the city. Local archaeology began to attract the academy's attention about 1873. A little group of interested students did the work of exploration mainly at their own expense and often with their own hands. Important objects had been found. In 1874 the academy published a series of seventeen photographs of seven mound-builder skulls. At the 1875 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Robert James Farquharson represented the academy and read a paper upon these finds. It was this paper to which reference is made above. Its author was no common man. Born of a Scotch father and a