The Natural History Department might become an interesting feature of the society if we had the means to enable us to employ a suitable person to procure and prepare specimens of the beasts and birds found within the borders of our state. This will soon become a labor attended with great difficulty and expense as the advance of settlements and the exterminating policy of the hunter and trapper will speedily cause many of the fur-bearing animals and rarer varieties of birds to disappear. A very fine collection of the birds of Minnesota was not long since taken east and sold, which would have been secured for our society but for the lack of means. Our sphere of usefulness is circumscribed by our poverty. If the legislature could be induced to increase the annual appropriation, we might publish our “Collections” annually, as we have an accumulation of interesting matter in manuscript, which we desire to put in more enduring and available form, and we are continually receiving favors from sister societies which we would be glad to reciprocate. We would like also to bind some of the newspapers which have been accumulating on our hands, to purchase books for the library, and to extend historical research into departments yet unfathomed. All of which is respectfully submitted, CHARLES E. MAYO, _Secretary_. MINERAL REGIONS OF LAKE SUPERIOR, AS KNOWN FROM THEIR FIRST DISCOVERY TO 1865. BY HON. H. M. RICE, OF SAINT PAUL. One hundred and twenty-one years ago there were found, north Lake of Superior, several “large lumps of the finest virgin copper.” The finder wrote: “In the honest exultation of my heart at so important a discovery, I directly showed it to the Company, (Hudson’s Bay Company) but the thanks I met with may be easily judged from the system of their conduct. The fact, without any inquiry into the reality of it, was treated as a chimerical illusion, and a stop arbitrarily put to all farther search into the matter, by the absolute lords of the soil.” The first attempt made to obtain copper from the Lake Superior region was by a company of adventurers from England, soon after the conquest of Canada, “but the distracted state of affairs in America obliged them to relinquish their scheme.” The next effort was made in 1771, by a company who petitioned for, and obtained, a charter from the British Government. The partners, in England, were His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, Mr. Secretary Townsend, Sir Samuel Tutchet, Baronet; Mr. Baxter, Consul of the Empress of Russia, and Mr. Cruickshank; in America, Sir William Johnson, Baronet, Mr. Bostwick, Mr. Baxter and Alexander Henry.