‘4 
The State aid forms but a part either of the invested funds 
or of the expenditures incurred in behalf of the Museum. 
During the first decade of its existence its resources were natu- 
rally spent in forming the collections which in some fields of 
study are to make it a great scientific centre. This result was 
necessarily accomplished at a certain sacrifice of its educational 
aims, and the number of trained students sent out from the 
Museum as teachers during its earlier years, though undoubtedly 
great, was perhaps not as large as might have been expected. 
from the pre-eminent qualifications of the founder himself as a 
teacher. Fortunately, the period of great outlays for collections, 
and for buildings and their equipment, is nearly past, and we 
may hope in the future to see the means of the Museum ex- 
pended rather on its laboratories, its investigations, and its pub- 
lications, than on material objects. There are no doubt many 
directions in which it would be advisable, for the sake of com- 
pleteness, still further to increase our collections, but that may 
be left for the future benefactors of the establishment. 
By a strange coincidence the foundation of the Museum dates 
from the publication of the “ Origin of Species.” Of course so 
powerful a movement in the scientific thought of the time could 
not fail to modify the problems which the institution was intended 
to illustrate and to solve. Yet the usefulness of the plans laid 
down for the Museum remains unimpaired by the new methods 
of treating questions of affinity, of origin, of geographical and 
geological distribution. Should the synoptic, the systematic, 
the faunal, and the palzontological collections cease to bear the 
interpretation given to them by the founder, their interest and 
importance, even for the advocates of the new biology, would 
not be one whit lessened. If the anatomical, embryological, 
synthetic, and other series presented by the pupil of Cuvier 
from his point.of view, are differently considered to-day by the 
followers of Darwin, they may for this very reason have gained 
a general interest they did not formerly possess. 
The plans of the’ founder have been realized, perhaps, far be- 
yond his most sanguine expectations, and it has been reserved 
for his immediate successor to see the establishment of a prosper- 
ous school of Natural History, amply provided with laboratories, 
connected with a University, and recognizing in the administra- 
tion of its trusts the claims of the College and of the advanced 
