22 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



professional naturalist. " , . . " The advantage, therefore, of com- 

 paratively small rooms, intended for a special purpose and for that 

 purpose alone, will overcome at once the objections to be made to 

 large halls where the visitor is lost in the maze of the cases, which, 

 to him, seem placed without purpose and filled only for the sake of 

 not leaving them empty," 



Let us now see how these ideas have been carried out 

 at the Harvard Museum. 



The first thing to be noticed is the small proportion of 

 the whole building open to the general public, as com- 

 pared with that devoted to the preservation and study 

 of the bulk of the collections. The existing portion of 

 the building comprises seventy-four rooms, which are 

 apportioned thus : — Ten rooms in the basement are filled 

 with the vast collection of specimens preserved in alcohol, 

 four rooms being occupied by the fishes, and the re- 

 mainder by reptiles, mammals, birds, Crustacea, moUusca, 

 and other invertebrata. Four rooms are devoted to the 

 entomological department. Seventeen rooms are devoted 

 to storage and workrooms for the various departments. 

 Four rooms are occupied by the libraries, and there are 

 also seven laboratories for the students, an aquarium and 

 vivarium, together with a large lecture-room. The re- 

 maining rooms are occupied by the curator and the 

 professors in the several departments, except the seven- 

 teen exhibition rooms, which alone are open to the 

 public. Before proceeding to describe these it will be well 

 to notice the admirable manner in which space is econo- 

 mized and work facilitated throughout the building. 



In all the storage and work rooms the side next the 

 windows is wholly occupied by rows of tables, while the 

 collections are preserved in cases running across the room 

 in parallel rows, from front to back, and reaching from the 

 floor to near the ceiling, with just space enough between 

 them to get at the specimens conveniently. These cases 

 are quite plainly constructed to hold series of drawers or 

 trays of a uniform size and depth, but which will admit 

 drawers of two or three times the depth where the size of 

 the specimens require it. The drawers run loosely in 

 open frames so as to be freely interchangeable, and the 



