536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Academy forms not quite a third of the contemplated structure. It is 

 built in what is called the collegiate-Gothic style of architecture, of a 

 green serpentine, with light-brown sandstone trimmings. This wing 

 is one hundred and eighty-six feet long and seventy-five feet broad. 

 The basement is devoted to storage, with rooms for a taxidermist and 

 a printing-office. On the ground-floor and its galleries are the library, 

 studies, rooms for artists, a bindery, a smoking-room, the herbarium, 

 and collections of insects and microscopes and microscopic slides. The 

 library is one hundred and thirty feet long and thirty feet wide be- 

 tween the ends of the cases, with a gallery at the height of ten feet, 

 and contains the largest collection of works on natural history over 

 26,000 volumes in America. The floor of the library is used for the 

 meetings of the Academy, and will seat over four hundred people. 

 From the entrance on Race Street, two short flights of stairs bring 

 one to the museum, a hall extending the whole length and width of 

 the building, with two wide galleries, giving a floor-space of more 

 than three fifths of an acre. The whole is fairly lighted by windows 

 in the sides and by a lantern sky-light eighty feet in length. The 

 whole building is fire-proof, is heated throughout by steam, and was 

 erected at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. 



A description of a museum is by no means an easy task, even in 

 the case of a small collection ; but, when the number of specimens is 

 as large as in the present instance, it is only possible to enumerate a 

 very small proportion of the many treasures. On entering the hall, 

 the visitor sees almost immediately in front of him, towering to a 

 height of fifteen feet, a skeleton of Hadrosaurus, a kangaroo-like rep- 

 tile from the gi-eensand of New Jersey ; around this are assembled 

 a polar bear, a rhinoceros-skeleton, two or three whale-skeletons, the 

 frame of a gorilla, a stuffed giraffe, and another in the condition Sydney 

 Smith wished to be in in hot weather, divested of flesh, and sitting, or 

 rather standing, in its bones. The table-cases and some of the upright 

 cases near by are filled with fossils, while in the wall-cases on the south 

 side of the building is displayed the ghastly collection of skulls, about 

 twelve hundred in number, which is not excelled anywhere in the 

 world. The upright cases on the north are occupied by the mammals, 

 while the wall-cases contain the fishes. Two flights of stairs at oppo- 

 site ends of the hall give access to the galleries, the railing-cases of 

 which are occupied by the minerals. The first gallery is the most 

 attractive to the ordinary visitor, as almost every case is devoted to 

 the enormous collection of birds, over 30,000 stuffed specimens being 

 displayed, while many thousand skins are packed away in drawers. 

 Of this large number, 27,000 specimens Avere the gift of one person, 

 the late Dr. T. B. Wilson, of Philadelphia. The collection is the third 

 largest in the world, being excelled only by that of the British Muse- 

 um and one in Vienna. Besides the collection of the Due di Rivoli, 

 mentioned before, it contains the collection of 2,000 specimens for- 



