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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1076 



creased in importance and extent that a 

 new building having 233,000 square feet of 

 exhibition space and 160,000 square feet of 

 laboratory and storage space was provided 

 for these collections alone. The earlier 

 buildings had no provision for laboratory 

 or storage space. Another indication of the 

 expansion of the National Museum in nat- 

 ural history lines is afforded by the fact 

 that whereas as late as 1893 there was but 

 a single curator or custodian of insects, at 

 the present time there are nine. 



In addition to changes in space the Na- 

 tional Museum underwent changes from the 

 administrative point of view which have 

 been described by Goode as follows. There 

 were three periods, he says : 



First, the period from the foundation of 

 the Smithsonian Institution to 1857, during 

 which time specimens were collected solely 

 to serve as materials for research. No spe- 

 cial effort was made to exhibit them to the 

 public or to utilize them except as a founda- 

 tion for scientific description or theory. 



Second, the period from 1857, when the 

 institution assumed the custody of the ' ' Na- 

 tional Cabinet of Curiosities," to 1876. 

 During this period the museum became a 

 place of deposit for scientific collections 

 which had already been studied, and these 

 collections so far as convenient were exhib- 

 ited to the public and, so far as practicable, 

 made to serve an educational purpose. 



Third, the period beginning with the year 

 1876, in which the museum undertook more 

 fully the additional task of getting collec- 

 tions and exhibited them on account of their 

 value from an educational standpoint. 



The progress that has here taken place in 

 the active acquisition of specimens instead 

 of the passive reception of them and in 

 paying more attention to exhibition of mate- 

 rial, may be said to have characterized all 

 active natural history museums in this 

 country in the past half century. 



The colleges of the country were in 

 earlier periods, as now, centers to which 

 natural history materials normally flowed, 

 such materials being both acquired for 

 teaching purposes and deposited for safe 

 keeping. But the attention and funds de- 

 voted to the display and preservation of 

 these objects were in most cases, meager, 

 and little effective effort towards the estab- 

 lishment of a natural history museum in 

 connection with a college or university in 

 this country seems to have been made until 

 that initiated by Professor Louis Agassiz 

 at Charleston in 1850 and at Harvard Col- 

 lege in 1852. Agassiz 's stay at Charleston 

 was too brief to effect noteworthy results, 

 but at Cambridge he accomplished much. 

 He found little material there suitable for 

 illustrating his lectures upon geology and 

 zoology and with characteristic zeal and 

 energy he set about supplying the defici- 

 ency. Indeed it is possible that he regarded 

 the founding of a museum as his most im- 

 portant work, since he expressed his pur- 

 pose to "consecrate all his energy and abil- 

 ity to the creation of a great museum, the 

 best arranged and most perfect in the 

 world. " It is a great tribute to the ability 

 and enthusiasm of Agassiz that he was able 

 under the shadow of the impending civil 

 war to raise the sum of nearly $200,000 

 from the legislature and citizens of Massa- 

 chusetts for the founding of this museuc?. 

 Agassiz stated his purposes in establishing 

 the museum to be : " (1) To express in mate- 

 rial forms the present state of our knowl- 

 edge of the animal kingdom; (2) To make 

 the museum a center of original research, 

 where men who are engaged in studying the 

 problems connected with natural history 

 could find, all they needed for comparative 

 investigation; and (3) To make the mu- 

 seum an educational institution having a 

 widespread influence upon the study, the 

 love and the knowledge of nature through- 



