Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/128

124 early in 1869, and wiped out the collections of Dr. Pope, and with them nearly all of the academy's museum. The library, then numbering not far from 3,000 volumes, fortunately was saved, through the activity of a few members, and most of the reserve copies of the academy's transactions, which had been covered by a falling floor, were included in this salvage.

Even before the fire, the academy had outgrown the accommodations that had been given it by Dr. Pope, as is shown by the appointment, some time before, of a committee to try to secure new and more ample quarters. Without the check of this fire, cramped surroundings might perhaps have caused stagnation in the material growth of the academy: but the loss of the museum effected lasting and at the time all but complete paralysis of this side of its activity. Still, out of the fire came sympathy, encouragement and some help. New quarters were offered in the public school board's building, and the public school library shelved its books; but the academy was a tenant-at-will, restricted in its powers, without funds for amplifying its collections or properly caring for them, and the need of putting it on a safer basis was so unmistakable that in 1872 a serious effort was again made to secure endowment funds. As a result of this effort, which was shared by the Missouri Historical Society, the academy was made the recipient, through the generosity of Mr. James H. Lucas, of a building site on which a home for the two societies was to be erected. Only $50,000 was considered necessary for the construction and maintenance of an adequate building; but even this sum was not forthcoming, so that ultimately the academy sold its share in the building site and put the money out at interest, and still has it, with some additions, safely invested.

For another dozen years the academy continued to meet in the quarters to which it moved after the fire. Another effort to secure a home was made and failed. Then for a like period it enjoyed the hospitality of Washington University. When the rooms that it occupied there were needed for university purposes, more than a decade since, it became a tenant of the Missouri Historical Society, which, unlike the academy, had at last secured a home of its own. There was thus secured a meeting room and limited shelving for the library, but such museum material as the academy possessed has been stored, for the most part, in basements and out-of-the-way places, where it has been of little use to members or to the public.

The interest felt by the early members in scientific effort at the great centers of such activity, as has been said, led to early association with prominent workers abroad, from whom publications and communications were received. The prompt establishment of such relations, fortified by the commencement of the academy's own activity as a publishing body, quickly resulted in the formation of a valuable