1858-64.] PLAN OF HIS MUSEUM. 85 



one hundred thousand dollars. Another sum, of sev- 

 enty-one thousand dollars, was also raised among the 

 citizens of Boston for the purpose of erecting a 

 fireproof building to receive and exhibit the collec- 

 tions, for which Harvard College gave a piece of 

 land, and Agassiz offered a plan. The plan was on 

 a grand scale ; the building was to be in the form of a 

 great rectangle open on the eastern side, the main part 

 364 feet in length by 64 feet in width on the western 

 side, with wings 205 feet in length and 64 feet in width. 

 It was impossible to erect such an immense fireproof 

 structure with the means at his disposal, and Agassiz 

 contented himself with building, for the present, only 

 two-fifths of the north wing. We shall see further on 

 how his plan was carried out, with great modifications, 

 if not in the building at least in the purpose to which 

 almost two-thirds of it were devoted. 



In December, 1859, the condition of the north wing 

 was sufficiently advanced to allow the beginning of the 

 removal of the collections from the wooden house, near 

 the chemical laboratory of the Scientific School, and, in 

 May, 1860, the building was completed, all the collec- 

 tions removed, and the wooden house also changed its 

 place and purpose, being moved opposite the north wing 

 of the great museum and placed on the ground on which 

 the south wing was to be built later, and which is now 

 occupied by the Peabody Museum of Ethnography. This 

 small house was completely refitted and arranged as a 

 sort of boarding-house, called the Zoological Hall, for 

 the use only of assistants and students of the Museum. 

 It was a kind of third " Hotel des Neuchatelois," con- 



