THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



205 



THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE 



THE EXTENSION OF THE AMEB- 

 IC AN MUSEUM OF NATURAL 

 HISTORY 



New York City has provided with 

 wise foresight for the museum that it 

 will need in the future by setting aside 

 for the purpose the whole of Manhat- 

 tan Square, extending from Central 

 Park to Ninth Avenue and from 

 Seventy-seventh Street to Eighty-first 

 Street. The south side of the building 

 now erected provides galleries of pro- 

 portions not equalled by any municipal 

 museum, and the completed structure 

 will surpass any national museum. 

 New York is growing more rapidly 

 than London and will soon be the 

 largest city in the world, even without 

 counting the population of the New 

 Jersey cities which form part of its 

 social and intellectual life. The Public 

 Library, which has just been formally 

 opened, the Metropolitan Museum of 

 Art, the Zoological and Botanical Gar- 

 dens, the buildings of Columbia Uni- 

 versity, New York University and the 

 City College are planned in a manner 

 fit for the greatest city in the history 

 of the world. Its vast wealth can be 

 put to no more worthy use than to give 

 material expression to the dominant 

 place that science, art and education 

 should hold in the community. 



The accompanying illustration, given 

 here by the courtesy of the president 

 of the museum, shows the design for 

 the eastern facade of the great build- 

 ing, as sketched by the architects, 

 Messrs. Trowbridge and Livingston. 

 It has not been adopted by the trus- 

 tees, but indicates the development that 

 is proposed. The general style of the 

 Romanesque architecture of the south- 

 ern facade is somewhat modified in the 

 direction of greater simplicity. The 

 monumental building faces Central 



Park, and will become part of the park, 

 being led up to by a driveway which 

 might ultimately cross to the Metro- 

 politan Museum. 



A building of this magnitude will 

 give ample space for the ideal develop- 

 ment of a museum of natural history. 

 As President Osborn has pointed out, 

 there are three ways in which the col- 

 lections should be exhibited — system- 

 atic, geographic and evolutionary. In 

 one part of the museum, in accordance 

 with the plan that is followed in most 

 institutions, animals would be arranged 

 for comparative study in accordance 

 with their scientific relationships from 

 whatever part of the world they may 

 have been collected. A geographic 

 sequence, as used by Alexander Agassiz 

 in the Harvard Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, is equally instructive. The 

 animal life of each region is shown 

 together. The plan is especially well 

 adapted to anthropological exhibits. 

 Not less important than the distribu- 

 tion in space is the evolution in time, 

 and an impressive series of connecting 

 halls is planned for the fourth floor of 

 the east side of the building, where the 

 visitor can pass from the dawn of life 

 through the ages of molluscs, of fishes, 

 of amphibians, of reptiles and of mam- 

 mals, until the age of man is reached. 



A great museum has two objects, 

 neither of which can be subordinated 

 to the other. It aims, on the one hand, 

 to arrange exhibits which are instruc- 

 tive and interesting to the public and, 

 on the other, to advance science by its 

 expeditions and the study of its col- 

 lections. Under the long and devoted 

 presidency of Mr. Morris K. Jesup, 

 with Dr. Hermon C. Bumpus as di- 

 rector during the later years, the Amer- 

 ican Museum accomplished much in 

 both directions, but the main emphasis 



