Excerpt from A History of the Illinois State Museum of Natural History The work of bringing the following material together has not been done in the spirit of idle inquiry into things of small moment but for the purpose of learning of events which have had valuable results. There is a dearth of records concerning the Museum. For long periods of years no catalogues were made. The catalogues that were begun within the last thirty years have not been made complete: But few curator's reports have ever been published. The facts presented have been found in the State Laws, Geo logical Survey Reports, in two Curator's Reports, in letters and from conversation with people acquainted with the institution. If the history of a dozen or more like institutions in the country were written there would doubtless be presented facts which would be of valuable service to those institutions and render them more capable of efficiently carrying out the purpose of their foundation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.