American Museum of Natural History

“ THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
The extraordinary development of universities in the United States is paralleled by the growth of its museums. In Washington, New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh, four museums of natural history have in a comparatively brief period taken their places among the leading institutions of the world, and in many other cities there are important and growing museums. ”

“ The collections of material upon which palæontologists are working have been enormously increased, and there is perhaps no place where activity has been greater than in the United States. The rocks of the Western States and Territories embrace a very rich collection of fossil forms, and, through the generosity of several wealthy men, exploring parties have been provided for and immense collections have been brought back to be preserved in the museums, especially of New Haven, Conn., and in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. ”

“ The contributions from the National Museum represented the natural resources of the United States: Rare specimens of the American fauna; illustrations showing the geological variations within the limits of the United States and the utilization of nature's rich gifts bestowed upon this country. This department gave us occasion to obtain an entire idea of the enormous melioration, arts and industries have experienced in modern times—by means of exhibits demonstrating the history and development of ceramics, graphic arts, musical instruments ”

“ The natural history collections contained in the museum of science, although the institution was only founded in 1896, are large and important, and are particularly rich in mineralogy, geology, paleontology, botany and zoology. The entomological collections are among the most important in the new world. The conchological collections are vast, and the paleontological collections are among the most important in America. ”

“ He spent his youth in ranging the fields and marshes in search of natural-history objects, pursued an irregular course in Oberlin college, chiefly devoting himself to science, and was made curator of the college museum. He afterward became a special student in the Harvard museum of comparative zoölogy, devoting himself to the study of birds. ”

“ Much valuable scientific information was accumulated, new facts concerning the glacial phenomena of South America were obtained, careful observations of the temperature of the water and deep-sea soundings were regularly made, and great collections of fishes, reptiles, mollusks, and other specimens of natural history were gathered, a large portion of which were added to his museum in Cambridge. ”

“ The need of a Museum of Natural History, and of a Gallery of Art, in New York, is so pressing that there is some danger of our accepting the appropriations without a proper regard to consequences. The Court House is not yet finished, and the foundations of the Post-office are scarcely laid. ”

“ The opening of this Museum to day is an important event in the annals of American science, and one from which great results are sure to follow. We see around us here, already, treasures of Nature from every land, and representing all periods of the earth's history. Not merely a few typical specimens, as in most new museums, but rich series, illustrating the marvelous diversity of Nature, both in the present and in the past. ”

“ The Museum and Hall of the Natural History Society, in Peter-street, can only be entered on presenting an order from a subscriber. The Museum is very rich in almost every description of natural history; we believe in ornithology it is particularly so; its collection of British birds is said to be unequalled, and its entomological department is becoming exceedingly extensive. ”

“ It is the oldest organization in the United States devoted to the encouragement of natural science. Its museum is especially rich in ornithological specimens and fossils, while its collection of shells is the finest in the world. The Jessup foundation provides gratuitous training for a number of young investigators. ”

“ A third museum is found to be full of stuffed birds, eggs, and nests; some of the birds stuffed in their natural surroundings are very beautifully done. The zoological library adjoins. A fourth museum, built in 1894, contains a large collection of stuffed animals and a collection of shells. Here is a huge skeleton of an African elephant, with good tusks, and a stuffed giraffe; a whole unmounted hippopotamus skin, and a stuffed quagga, now extinct.
Close by this museum are some pens containing zebras and wild asses. The new bear house, built in 1897, contains a fine collection. ”

“ OWING to the establishment of new natural history museums in different parts of the United States, western exploration for the past history of the reptilian and mammalian life of North America is becoming more active and energetic every year. ”

“ Rude tools, and human skulls, intermingled with bones of animals of species long extinct, have been found in caves or dug out of deep layers of earth; and they indicate [Pg 4] that in the Mississippi valley and on the Atlantic and Pacific slopes there lived, perhaps hundreds of ages ago, men of a low grade of culture.
In the great museums—as the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, the Peabody Museums at Cambridge and New Haven, and the natural history rooms at New York and elsewhere—may be seen thousands of the relics of vanished races of men and animals that once inhabited this continent. ”

“ An important activity of the museum is its generous distribution of duplicate specimens in natural history to scientific societies, colleges, and other educational institutions throughout the United States. ”

“ It appears, from evidence, that many of the middle classes are in the habit of forming collections in various branches of Natural History, and that many, even the working classes, employ their holidays in the study of botany or geology, or in the collection of insects obtained in the neighbourhood of London; that they refer to the British Museum, in order to ascertain the proper classification of the specimens thus obtained, and that want of leisure alone restrains the further increase of this class of visitors. ”

“ The degradation of museums to the present zoological ignorance of the masses is not desired, but a levelling up of the latter is the thing needful, when natural history may be seen to be a thing of national importance, and worthy of real national support. At present, as Sir William observes, "the largest museum yet erected, with all its internal fittings, has not cost so much as a single fullyequipped line-of-battle ship, which in a few years may be either at the bottom of the sea, or so obsolete in construction as to be worth no more than the materials of which it is made." ”

“ According to Huxley's views a complete system demanded a triple museum for each subject, Zoology and Botany, since Geology was sufficiently provided for in Jermyn Street—one typical or popular, "in which all prominent forms or types of animals or plants, recent or fossil, should be so displayed as to give the public an idea of the vast extent and variety of natural objects, to diffuse a general knowledge of the results obtained by science in their investigation and classification, and to serve as a general introduction to the student in Natural Science" ”

“ But in the animal or vegetable branch of natural history there is a great deficiency, and altogether the Museum is not worthy of a country which seems destined by nature to be the great emporium of all natural science. ”

“ There are five galleries devoted to natural history, and are named thus: the Botanical Museum, Mammalia Gallery, Eastern Zoölogical Gallery, Northern Zoölogical Gallery, and the Mineral Gallery. The specimens in all these are very fine. Nothing can be finer than the mammalia. The preservation has been perfect, and far surpasses what I have been accustomed to see in museums, where decay seems to be often rioting upon the remains of nature. ”

“ The study of these and of the tsetze flies by skilled entomologists employed in the museum has been a necessary part of the steps now being taken everywhere to preserve human population from the [Pg 220] attacks of certain deadly kinds among them, distinguished from the others which are harmless.
Thus, then, it seems that the first and most important purpose for which great "museums" exist is that of "the making of new knowledge"—the increase of science—by furnishing carefully gathered and preserved "specimens" of all kinds, and by working out the history and significance of those collections. ”

“ Whilst we should patriotically aspire to render the local collection as perfect as possible, I would not by any means have the usefulness of museums stop here. Comparing any local collection with a general collection, it will, of course, be found that many important groups of 'animals, vegetables, and minerals, are but imperfectly represented, whilst others are altogether blank. There is, consequently, great danger of very limited and inadequate notions of the great system of Nature being formed by the student who confines his attention to local natural history. ”

“ Such a relation our National Museum should hold to scientific men and affairs in America. It should receive and take care of all material that has been or may be valuable for investigation or for the illustration of the ethnology, natural history, geology, products, and resources of our own country, or for comparison with the material of other countries. It should furnish material for all kinds of scientific investigations which deal with specimens or types, and give aid to such researches and publish their results. ”

“ It affords glimpses into the mysteries of the Animal Kingdom, with all its varieties, its wonders, its traceable progresses, its past and extinct forms, its promises of future developments. Then the mineralogical galleries afford the general visitor a peep at the formations of the earth; the various developments of minerals; the natural state of ores and stones which most men see only in their manufactured state. From the mineralogical tables the visitor stepped aside to examine the wondrous revelations of extinct animal life recovered from the bowels of the earth ”

“ It is well to remember in what Museum a fauna, or section of a fauna, is best represented. Again, well-known private collections are constantly, through death or other circumstances, either sold in their entirety or disposed of in parts by the auctioneer or natural-history agent ”

“ Large sums may be spent to advantage on groups or on individual specimens when by such features local pride is aroused and visitors attracted. Carefully selected index collections can be used to give general views of the animal, plant and mineral worlds, while industry and ingenuity find full room for exercise in illustrating clearly and vividly the geology, botany and zoology of the region in which the museum is situated. As an agent of popular instruction the museum in the smaller centers possesses important advantages in the comparative ease with which people may be reached and interested. ”

“ In these heydays of popular zoology, when eager young naturalists are coming to the front in crowds, and fine new scientific museums are starting up on every hand, there is small need to apologize for the appearance of a work designed expressly for the naturalist and museum-builder. ”

“ By some accident zoölogy Is the term which has become connected with the special work of arranging specimens and naming species which is carried on in great museums, and which has gone on in museums since the days when 'objects of natural history,' and other curiosities, first attracted serious attention in the sixteenth century. Accordingly, zoology, in this limited sense, has taken the direction indicated by the requirements of the curators of museums, and is supposed to consist in the study of animals not as they are in toto. ”