644 The Smithsonian Institution 



within and without its walls, have yielded rich results. Ref- 

 erence has already been made to the work of Leidy and Meek, 

 respectively, on the vertebrate and invertebrate fossils from 

 the West. 



The exhibition collections, with their systems of arrange- 

 ment and labeling continually improved by earnest work on 

 the part of the curators, under the inspiration of that genius 

 for museum administration which distinguished the late di- 

 rector, the lamented Doctor Goode, have been widely and 

 beneficently influential for good. Apart from their value as a 

 means of scientific information to the general public, they have 

 been an object-lesson to geological instructors in colleges and 

 schools, and to curators of geological collections in local 

 museums. Thus they have served to increase the educa- 

 tional value of geological collections throughout the country. 



Particular attention may well be called to the collection 

 illustrating dynamical geology, interestingly described by 

 Doctor Merrill in his " Preliminary Handbook of the Depart- 

 ment of Geology." Collections in mineralogy, lithology, and 

 paleontology are to be found in about all museums. But 

 systematically arranged and well-labeled collections illustrat- 

 ing the subject of dynamical geology have scarcely existed 

 in the past, and are still comparatively few. Yet a good 

 collection of dynamical geology can be made far more intelli- 

 gible, and therefore far more instructive, to the general pub- 

 lic, than collections in any other department of geological 

 science ; while its value to the student is inestimable. The 

 example of so instructive a collection of this sort in the 

 National Museum cannot fail to exert a wide influence upon 

 the schools and local museums of the country. 



In still another way the National Museum has richly con- 

 tributed to the diffusion of knowledge in geology and the 

 cognate sciences — namely, by the liberal distribution of 



