40 NATURAL SCIENCE. July. 



New York, and Cambridge (Boston), particularly instructive for one 

 who had to reorganise an old, and initiate an orderly system in a 

 new Museum. In many of the minor Museums which I visited in 

 the States and Canada, I also acquired suggestive ideas, which have, 

 in due course, produced satisfactory results. 3 



In the year 1885, the principal events here were connected with 

 the completion of the plans for the New Museum and Library, and 

 the laying of the foundation by His Royal Highness the Prince of 

 Wales, on the loth of April, the ceremonial connected with which 

 having been witnessed by about 8,000 persons. 



In the latter part of the same year, the lower hall of the Natural 

 History Museum, which had previously been the receptacle of many 

 miscellaneous objects, was reorganised, scattered collections of 

 reptiles, fish, and fossils being brought together and systematically 

 arranged in suitable cases ; but this work was not wholly completed 

 till the year 1890, when the fossils were removed to the gallery vacated 

 by the Art Collection. During the same year, Mr. A. G. More'slist of 

 Irish Birds and several other publications referring to the collections 

 were issued, and arrangements were concluded with the Science and 

 Art Department for the publication of Miss Stokes's " Arts of 

 Christian Ireland." 



In 1886, the work of concentrating the collections in the sections 

 assigned to them was vigorously pressed on. The general reference 

 series of birds' skins, belonging to about 5,000 species, was pro- 

 vided with glass topped drawers, and a cast of the skeleton of the 

 Megatherium was successfully mounted. An arrangement was also 

 made by which the majority of the specimens obtained in a dredging 

 expedition off the West Coast of Ireland, organised by the Rev. 

 William S. Green, were to become the property of the Museum. 



In 1887, the New Museum Building had acquired sufficient form 

 to admit of a scheme of allotment of its twenty-four rooms and two 

 courts with their galleries. This scheme, with but slight modification, 

 has been carried out in the arrangement of the collections ; needless 

 to add it facilitated the transfer, as each object, when leaving its old 

 quarters, had a definite destination, and so the rooms were filled con- 

 currently, and we were able to open to the public much sooner than 

 would otherwise have been the case. 



The scheme of allotment, with lists of the principal contents 

 of each section, will be found in the General Guide to the Museum, to 

 which reference can easily be made, so that the details need not be 

 given here. 



A very important alteration in the casing of the Mammal 

 collection in the Natural History Department, by which the 

 specimens were brought forth from the darkness of cases under the 



•^ See Appendix to thirty-seccnd Report of the Science and Art Department, 

 1885. 



