A NEW FIELD FOR MUSEUM WORK 199 
up the new department along two somewhat distinct lines, bacteriology and 
municipal sanitation. 
There is at present no comprehensive collection of bacteria in this 
country and workers who desire authentic cultures must send to Prag for 
them unless a neighboring laboratory happens to have the particular 
organism desired. In the bacteriological laboratory now being equipped 
at the Museum, the new Department will install and keep under cultivation 
a complete collection of bacteria, securing material from colleges and board 
of health laboratories in this country and in Europe. The Museum will 
thus be in a position to act as a central bureau for the distribution of bac- 
teria, supplying the needs of corresponding laboratories and of schools and 
other institutions which may occasionally desire cultures. Such a bacterio- 
logical collection when established will furnish also an exceptional oppor- 
tunity for studies of the systematic relationships of this group in which a 
better biological classification is greatly needed. 
The public exhibits of the Department will deal chiefly with phases of 
municipal sanitation. The central idea will be to set forth some of the 
conditions which affect the life of the human animal in that form of com- 
mensalism which we call a city. Temporary exhibits will be prepared to 
illustrate the history and development of the more important phases of 
city life. For example, the first of these exhibits will deal with the problem 
of water supply sanitation, illustrating by models and specimens as well 
as by photographs and charts, the sources of water, its collection for public 
use, the danger of infection, the development of microscopic algee and 
protozoa in reservoirs, methods adopted for purification and_ resulting 
effects upon the public health. The history and development of the 
present and future sources of water supply of New York — an engineering 
undertaking second only in magnitude to that of the Panama Canal — 
will be graphically represented. The chief features of these temporary 
exhibits will be preserved for a permanent exhibit of Public Health, such as 
several German cities now possess, but of which there is no example in the 
United States. 
Professor Winslow comes to the Museum from ten years of service in the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where since 1905, he has been 
Assistant Professor of Sanitary Biology. In 1903, he was appointed 
Biologist-in-charge of the Sanitary Research Laboratory and Experimental 
Station, founded by the Institute at that time for the study and dissemina- 
tion of knowledge with regard to sanitary questions. Professor Winslow 
was also Assistant Health Officer in Montclair, New Jersey, during the 
summer of 1898 and did special work in the Engineer’s Office of the Massa- 
chusetts State Board of Health during the summers of 1899-1902. He has 
