PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 109 



the museum can be of the greatest help in visualizing the 

 text books. The cultures of peoples, how they utilize their 

 natural resources and acquire material not found in their 

 own country; the physical character of the country which 

 has governed the development of the people, mountains, 

 streams, valleys, deserts — all of these and more may be 

 visualized in such a manner that the student easily grasps 

 the significance of the facts of climate, topography, or 

 geographic position, which have been potent in shaping 

 the destiny of a group of peoples. The industries of cer- 

 tain countries may be shown, such as the common articles 

 upon which we depend for our daily comfort — cotton and 

 its defivitives — iron and steel — pearl and ivory buttons — 

 coal — aluminum — and many others. Exhibits showing 

 the processes of manufacture from the collecting of the 

 raw material to the sellmg of the finished product, with 

 all of the by-products indicated, are of potent value to 

 the teacher of geography. 



And in the natural sciences — geology, zoology, botany 

 — the museum is indispensable because it visualizes the 

 courses given in the different branches. The student pur- 

 suing a course in systematic zoology may study the sjmop- 

 tic collection, arranged so that the major groups are ex- 

 hibited to show their development from simjDle to com- 

 plex organisms, their relation to each other and to the 

 past history of the earth, the extinct groups being sliown 

 with the recent groups. Such an exhibit links together 

 all life, showing it to be interrelated on every hand. 



The student of geology may crystallize his course in 

 historical geology or palaeontology by consulting the ex- 

 hibits of fossils, in which he may follow the changes of 

 life from its first definite appearance in the early Cam- 

 brian seas to the latest prehistoric period. Here can be 

 shown, as nowhere else, the dying out of one type of life 

 and the advent, almost instantaneously as it seems, of 

 another. Such examples as the dying out of the Ammon- 

 ites in the Cretaceous, the rise and fall of the huge sauri- 

 ans in Mesozoic times, and the advent of the mammals in 

 Cenozoic times indicate the usefulness of such exhibits. 

 The subject of coal can also be made more understandable 



