64 NATURALISTS' ASSISTANT. 



The architect draws some showy or striking "elevation" with 

 useless towers and spires and narrow windows, and leaves in- 

 ternal arrangements to chance. The result is an ill contrived 

 building, with inaccessible and useless rooms, numerous dark 

 corners and disagreeable cross lights. But the greatest dis- 

 advantage lies in the impossibility of maintaining anything 

 like a systematic arrangement of the collections. The proper 

 way is first to arrange the rooms and apartments and 

 then to accommodate the walls and the roof to them. It 

 would be well for all having charge of the erection of build- 

 ings for the display of specimens of Natural History to visit 

 some of the larger museum buildings such as those at Bos- 

 ton, Cambridge, New Haven and Washington and consult 

 with the authorities there in charge as to the advantages and 

 disadvantages of the building occupied by them. It might 

 also be an advantage to visit the museums of New York, 

 Princeton and above all Philadelphia, 1 to see how a museum 

 building should not be constructed. 



The following plan is here inserted as a hint which might 

 be useful in the construction of a building of moderate size. 

 It contains some features of value but can of course be mod- 

 ified to suit circumstances. It is primarily designed for the 

 use of the average college. 



1 The cases at Princeton are (or, were, at the writer's visit) worse if possible than the . 

 building, while no museum building could be less adapted for its purpose than that 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Those collections of Europe 

 which are tucked away in the corners of some old castle or which are displayed in the 

 cloisters of some former monastery are fully as well provided for. The building is the 

 result of architects working without intelligent supervision and was constructed by the 

 Academy in direct opposition to the views of its best scientific members. 



