INTRODUCTION. IN 1880 the chairman of your present Committee on the Album of Portraits, then being Secretary, was encouraged by a vote of the Society (see Vol. V. p. 18) to endeavor to make a portrait album of all the Fellows of the Society. By incessant appeals to the Fellows for two years he succeeded in obtaining photographic negatives of about one-half of the Fellows. These he delivered to the Heliotype Company, of Boston, but before the positives could be printed the establishment, together with all the negatives, was burned to the ground. This disaster, coming after a manifest lack of co-operation on the part of the Fellows, so disheartened your committee of one that he abandoned the undertaking. In 1893 the project of making and publishing an album of portraits was revived and the present Committee appointed. Justice requires that the majority of the Committee should state that the burden of collecting the portraits, signatures, and biographies has been assumed by one man, Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, to whom the Society is under obligation for the persistent efforts of eight years which were required to complete the collection. The two other members of the Committee have merely contributed suggestions, criticisms, and a few portraits and biographical data. |