66 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 81. 



exhibition and for the general public, who 

 have had no previous instruction in natural 

 history whatever. 



The natural history museum is for the 

 benefit largely of the public, who have had no 

 preliminary training in biology, and if lec- 

 tures are not held to instruct them, how 

 thej'- can appreciate the specimens which 

 they see by the countless thousands on ex- 

 hibition in the museums. 



I am convinced that the lectures given at 

 the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, do an im- 

 mense amount of good, and they reach a 

 class of people, like teachers, who are un- 

 able to follow the courses given in the col- 

 leges and universities. In Paris, as in many 

 other places, there is a considerable amount 

 of feeling as to how much general work in 

 biology should be done at the Museum, 

 and if the professors or curators make their 

 courses too general, they will encroach upon 

 the work of the learned professors at the 

 Sorbonne or in the universities. In general 

 the courses in natural historj'^ in the col- 

 leges are more in detail ; they are often 

 prepared for students who are going to be- 

 come professional naturalists. On the other 

 hand, the museum work, owing to the na- 

 ture of the specimens, is less detailed and 

 more general in its character. Museum 

 lectures on natural history must necessarily 

 be rather superficial, owing to the class of 

 hearers, and these lectures would be rather 

 on the broad facts of general morphology 

 in its bearing on classification and of geo- 

 graphical distribution of animals. Detailed 

 embryological and histological lectures 

 would be of little use in a museum cur- 

 riculum . At the Jardin des Plantes courses 

 are given in embryology and histology, but I 

 believe there are very few students who take 

 them. The ' cour ' in general comparative 

 anatomy is very popular at the ' Jardin ' and 

 well attended, and I see no reason why a 

 course of this kind could not be given in 

 museums in this country. At the Jardin 



des Plantes there are a number of labora- 

 tories for practical work, where the students 

 can go and study the specimens on which the 

 professor lectures. These laboratories for 

 practical work are an absolute necessity, as 

 natural history taught without seeing and 

 studying the specimens is of little benefit. 



The department of comparative anatomy 

 is one of the strongest, if not the best at the 

 Museum. Prof. Filhol, who is so well 

 known for his extensive investigations in 

 vertebrate paleontology, is at the head of 

 this department. The material which M. 

 Filhol has at his command for teaching is 

 immense, and the osteological collection 

 alone is the largest in the world. The col- 

 lection of skeletons was largely made by 

 Cuvier and used by him for comparison 

 with the extinct fossil vertebrata, which he 

 so ably described in his 'Ossemenes Fos- 

 siles.' M. Filhol is now having prepared a 

 beautiful collection of the internal organs 

 of the vertebrata, which are injected and 

 colored to immitate the hues of the living 

 viscera. This collection will be of immense 

 value in laborator}^ work and in the lecture 

 room. 



Prof. Gau dry's department of paleon- 

 tology is about to be greatly enlarged, owing 

 to the new museum which is rapidly ap- 

 proaching completion. This new building 

 is for the department of comparative an- 

 atomy, including under this term the an- 

 atomy of recent and extinct types. Verte- 

 brate paleontology has suffered too long 

 being placed under geology, and most 

 naturalists who are workers in vertebrate 

 paleontology realize that the true position 

 of this division of biology is under com- 

 parative anatomy and not geology. Ver- 

 tebrate paleontology as studied by the 

 methods of anatomy is now making great 

 progress, the old and dry geological methods 

 as applied to paleontology only prevented 

 the progress of this science from a morpho- 

 logical and phylogenetic standpoint. 



