THE MUSEUM. 



153 



The Peabody Museum. 



New Haven, Conn., Mar., 1896. 



In 1866, George Peabody, of Lon- 

 don, but of Massachusetts' birth, en- 

 trusted to a board of trustees, selected 

 by himself, the sum of $150,000, "to 

 found and maintain a museum of nat- 

 ural history, especially in the depart- 

 ments of zoology, geology, and miner- 

 alogy, in connection with Yale college. " 

 Of this sum, $100,000 was devoted by 

 Mr. Peabody to the erection, "on 

 land to be given for that purpose by 

 the president and fellows of Yale col- 

 lege, of a fire-proof building," to be, 

 when completed, the property of Yale 

 college. Of the remainder of the gift, 

 $20,000 was set apart to "accumu- 

 late as a building fund" and $30,000 

 to meet by its income from invest- 

 ment the expenses attending "the care 

 of the museum, the increase of its col- 

 lections, and the general interests of 

 the departments of science before 

 named. " 



Ten years later, in 1876, the first 

 wing of the museum — the part now 

 standing — was completed and furnish- 

 ed with cases at a cost $175,000, the 

 whole outlay being met by the accu- 

 mulated building fund. 



The central part of the structure and 

 the south wing remain to be built 

 whenever the means available for the 

 purpose shall be adequate. The cen- 

 tral part is much needed, as only a 

 small part of the specimens secured 

 can now be placed on exhibition in the 

 first wing. 



The first fioor of the building is de- 

 voted to the department of mineralogy 

 and to the purposes of a lecture room. 

 The minerals occupy cases in the west 

 room, the door of which fronts the en- 



trance to the museum. The minerals 

 of the Gibbs' collection, deposited by 

 Colonel George Gibbs with the college 

 in 1809-10, and purchased in 1852 at 

 a cost of 820,000, and the extensive 

 accumulations since made, are here 

 preserved and for the most part on ex- 

 hibition, making it one of the largest 

 public collections in the country. The 

 private cabinet of Prof. Brush, ar- 

 ranged in drawers in his private room 

 on the same story, although not open 

 to general exhibition, adds greatly to 

 the means of study and investigation 

 in this department. 



Besides minerals, the exhibition 

 room contains one of the largest collec- 

 tions of meteorites in the country. 

 Among the specimens, there is the 

 famous mass of meteoric iron from 

 Texas, weighing 1635 pounds; some 

 hundreds of meteorites, large and small, 

 all of which came from a single fall in 

 Iowa in May, 1S79; the interesting 

 Weston meterorite, which fell in Wes- 

 ton, Conn., in 1807. 



An important recent addition is a 

 collection of meteorites, numbering 

 nearly one thousand, which came from 

 the great meteoric fall of May 2, 1890, 

 in Winnebago county, Iowa. 



A case in the center of the room 

 contains the large and beautiful collec- 

 tion of Chinese artistic work in stone, 

 chiefly in jade and agate, with other 

 like objects bequeathed by Dr. S. 

 Wells Williams, who was for forty- 

 three years in China as Christian phil- 

 anthropist, editor, author, and attache 

 to the American legation, and for some 

 years before his decease was profes- 

 sor of Chinese in the university. 



The large room on the same story 

 adjoining the mineral room, on the 

 north side of the hall, is arranged for 



