602 
museum—established on lines of modern 
thought and research—existed in an em- 
bryonic form in only a few of our insti- 
tutions of learning. From this period date 
a number of excellent monographs—in 
which the authors outline the plans of a 
proposed anatomical museum designed to 
meet the requirements demanded by the 
advance of the biological sciences—from 
the standpoint both of the teacher and the 
investigator. Prominent among these inter- 
esting publications are the following : 
‘Outlines for a Museum of Anatomy. 
Prepared for the Bureau of Education,’ by 
R. W. Shufeldt. 1885. 
‘Die Aufgaben der anatomischen Insti- 
tute,’ by Professor A. Koellicker, 1884. 
An address delivered at the opening of the 
new anatomical institute in Wurzburg on 
November 3, 1883. 
‘The Educational Museums of Ver- 
tebrates,’ an address before the Section of 
Biology of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, at Ann Arbor, 
August, 1885, by Professor B. G. Wilder. 
‘The Synthetic Museum of Comparative 
Anatomy as the Basis for a Comprehensive 
System of Research,’ by John A. Ryder, 
Professor of Comparative Embryology at 
the University of Pennsylvania, Phila- 
delphia. 1893. 
As I look over the list of these and other 
contributions to the literature of the ana- 
tomical museum I am tempted to charac- 
terize the period between 1885 and 1895 as 
the prophetic era, foreshadowing the estab- 
lishment and recognition of the most 
essential and valuable aid to scientific 
anatomical instruction and research which 
our universities to-day possess. When we 
analyze the great and radical changes 
which our methods of morphological teach- 
ing have experienced since that time, we 
shall, I believe, agree that the demon- 
strative and objective instruction which 
has replaced so largely the old didactic 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. XIII. No. 329. 
lecture is intimately and organically con- 
nected with the evolution of the modern 
anatomical museum. It will perhaps best 
serve the purpose of my communication if 
in the following I confine myself to the 
facts as they are most familiar to me in the 
case of my own university, which, I believe, 
may fairly be taken as a concrete example 
of the general progress which has marked 
the period in question in the scientific insti- 
tutes throughout our country. 
The establishment of a museum of verte- 
brate comparative anatomy, on lines de- 
signed to illustrate and demonstrate to the 
fullest extent possible the morphological 
truths embodied in the doctrines of evo- 
lution, heredity and descent is an under- 
taking requiring years of careful and suc- 
cessful work before even a satisfactory 
beginning is made. The foundation of the 
museum at Columbia University was laid 
in 1889, and, while in many directions our 
progress has been rapid and the results 
gratifying, yet we feel that to-day but the 
outlines exist along which future growth is 
to take place. 
I. PLAN AND SCOPE OF THE MUSEUM AND 
ITS RELATION TO ANATOMICAL IN- 
STRUCTION. 
I may in the first place call your atten- 
tion to the general plan and purpose of the 
museum, in accordance with which the 
objects have been collected and prepared, 
and to the relation existing between the 
museum and the undergraduate instruction 
in anatomy. 
The following considerations present 
themselves : ; 
1. The fundamental plan of the museum 
includes in the first place a general ex- 
position of the vertebrate classes, whose 
purpose is to present the cardinal points in 
the anatomical structure of the great verte- 
brate classes and subclasses. 
Each vertebrate class, subclass and order 
