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NA TURE 



\_April 2, 1885 



They are confined almost wholly, however, to the Crus- 

 tacea, mollusks, radiates, and marine protozoa. Of 

 insects there is a very small showing — only enough to 

 represent scantily the classification of that immense class. 

 This is 'partly because it is unwise to display insects 

 freely, since exposure to the light causes their colours to 

 fade, but is due chiefly to lack of material, owing to the 

 fact that no entomologists of note have been especially 

 interested in the progress of this museum. 



On the other hand, the special tastes of Profs. Verrill, 

 S. I. Smith, J. H. Emerton, and others, and the intimate 

 relations the Museum (through these gentlemen) have sus- 

 tained with the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Fish 

 Commission, have brought the department of marine 

 invertebrates to an almost unrivalled perfection. In no 

 room does the casual visitor linger longer than in this 

 one ; while its contents are unusually interesting to spe- 

 cialists, because of the large proportion of type-specimens 

 included. In many instances these are unique ; as, for 

 example, some of those beautiful orange and scarlet gor- 

 gonias or " sea-fans " — flat, branchless, mossy growths of 

 calcareous matter, which resemble great masses of pressed 

 seaweed. One case is wholly filled with these corallines ; 

 and it is doubtful whether any museum in the world can 

 make a better showing of them. 



The corals, also, are very fine, embracing many rare 

 and even unique forms, as might be expected, remember- 

 ing Prof. J. D. Dana's labours in that direction ; so that 

 only the Museum of Comparative Zoology equals this 

 part of the cabinet. 



In the way of deep-sea forms of crustaceans, and 

 echinoderms also, a great number of novel species are 

 publicly displayed, which were procured in recent dredg- 

 ings by the Fish Commission. Among them stand large- 

 jars holding alcoholic remains of the giant cuttle-fishes 

 upon which Verrill has written so many learned pages ; 

 and overhead hang Emerton's paper models of Archi- 

 teuthis and a huge octopus, which half the visitors take 

 to be real devil-fishes stuffed, and gaze at with fearful 

 curiosity. 



The remaining rooms on this floor are occupied as 

 laboratories or lecture-rooms by Profs. Verrill and Smith, 

 of the Sheffield Scientific School. 



The fourth story contains storerooms filled with fossils, 

 a collection (on exhibition) of about two thousand antiqui- 

 ties of great value from Central America, and a fair show 

 of archaeological relics, the most notable part of which is 

 the pottery from the mounds of the Ohio valley. 



But the glory of the Yale Museum is its palaeontological 

 treasures, brought together wholly by Prof. O. C. Marsh. 

 The few representatives of this collection visible in the 

 second-floor rooms and in the hall-ways are alone 

 sufficient to stamp the museum as pre-eminent in this 

 line ; but they are merely an advertisement of what cellar 

 and attic contain. It is not too much to say that, in 

 respect to vertebrate palaeontology (outside of fishes), this 

 museum is not surpassed in the world. Where other col- 

 lections own fragments or single skeletons, Prof, Marsh 

 boasts scores or hundreds of individuals, while many 

 extinct races are known only by their fossil remains in his 

 possession. 



This is the result of wisely-directed energy, and the 

 ability to spend money promptly and liberally. Marsh's 

 frequent expeditions to the far west are well known to 

 geologists. Many car-loads resulting from these were 

 not only shipped home by himself, but his agents have 

 been forwarding enormous quantities ever since from 

 Wyoming and Colorado "quarries." 



To Prof. Marsh's personal collection somewhat has been 

 added at the museum by the U S. Geological Survey, which 

 will become the publisher of the outcome of his studies now 

 in progress. A score or so of assistants are constantly on 

 duty, either in study, or in the mechanical work of skil- 

 fully extracting fossils from the rocky matrix ; in match- 



ing and mounting, by the aid of wire, clay, and plaster, 

 for permanent preservation, the often badly-broken bones 

 of some antique brute whose extinction most of the world 

 can accept with resignation ; or in making casts, models, 

 and drawings of fossils, original and " restored." 



Several quarto volumes are already under weigh, and 

 scarcely an issue of the American Journal of Science 

 appears without an advance note of some special dis- 

 covery in vertebrate palaeontology, anticipating the com- 

 pleter descriptions to be made from this museum's rich 

 materials. 



NOTES 

 The new Lord Rector of Glasgow University, Dr. Lushing- 

 ton, was installed on the 26th ult. The address, which was in 

 every way worthy both of the University and of the Lord Rec- 

 tor, contrasted strongly, with its calm, deep utterances and its 

 grasp of the needs of a complete academic life, with the more or 

 less political utterances to which we have been too much accus- 

 tomed on similar occasions. We give the following quotation 

 touching scientific work at a University: — "Communion 

 of mind with mind is the most powerful help to mental 

 growth, calling forth and expanding the intellectual powers 

 which it is the duty of every free man to cultivate ; in such 

 intercourse he who gives receives, and is made richer in giving 

 what awaktns new life in another. By fellowship of this kind 

 toil is sweetened and obstacles overcome. What is the history 

 of the greatest inventors and discoverers the world has seen, but 

 a fum defiance of difficulties and discouragements? And who 

 that ever honestly faced any difficult problem, and ' oft foiled, 

 oft rose ' in the struggle has failed to gain at last the meed of 

 hard-won victory ? The rapture of Balboa, when from a peak 

 of Darien he first gazed on the Pacific, is even less touching 

 than that austere joy, of conte uplation destined to those who 

 by steadfast and painful efforts, long seemingly unrewarded, have 

 wrested from nature some hitherto unguessed secret, some truth 

 which illumines and brings into closer union other familiar but 

 as yet unconnected aspects of knowledge. When, after years of 

 doubtful poring, the light flashed upon Newton which was for 

 ever to make clear to man the dynamics of the heavenly bodies, 

 showing how the same law sways every leaf that flutters in the 

 gale and the remotest star-clusters, we can well conceive how 

 the ecstacy of wonder and delight wa-: a disturbing presence that 

 overpowered him, and made him request a friend to finish the 

 calculation he had begun. And every generation, every decade, 

 almost every year, opens new vistas through which the piercing 

 eye, armed with weapons inherited from earlier conquests, may 

 look forward bright in the hope of adding something more to the 

 store of accomplished good to mankind ; for in knowledge, as in 

 nature, nothing is unfruitful. Such hope cheered and upheld 

 many daring pioneers of science, whose venerated names, now 

 become household words, are linked together for ever in the 

 history of human progress, known and honoured throughout the 

 whole civilised world. Yet who in the age of Watt, even in 

 the boldest flights of presaging imagination, could have foretold 

 such wondrous conquests over space and time as the spectro- 

 scope, the electric telegraph, and the telephone have revealed ? 

 But I forbear from dwelling longer on the incentives to exertion 

 held out to all by the numerous physical sciences which have so 

 many gifted exponents, before whom it becomes a non-expert to 

 be rather a listener than a speaker. May all honour and success 

 be theirs in sounding the mysterious depths of nature, and drawing 

 into light the essential order which underlies her seeming com- 

 plexities, ruling them with the necessity of intelligible relations. 

 Many and various are the marvels with which " the world of 

 eye and ear " surrounds us, inviting adventurous search into their 

 far recesses ; but as human thought advances, winning ever 

 wider triumphs in solving riddle after riddle, must not the further 



