172 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 344. 



in geology and mineralogy were annually 

 issuing. 



Apart from the gradually educated de- 

 mands amongst the studious classes, the 

 public- spirited citizens of New York were 

 intelligently sensitive to the reputation of 

 the city, and when they recalled the mu- 

 seums of foreign cities whose collections 

 and arrangements had challenged their 

 admiration, they regretted that ISTew York 

 was yet without its own museum. In the 

 United States it was behind other cities. 



College of Physicians and Surgeons, Barclay St. 



The Academy of Natural Sciences, founded 

 in Philadelphia in 1812, possessed some 

 collections with which were associated the 

 names of Morton, Conrad, Nuttall, Audubon, 

 Lucian Charles Bonaparte, Harlan, Eafin- 

 esque and others, and had created a pro- 

 visional museum. Thomas Say, the distin- 

 guished conchologist, was its first curator, 

 and through the generosity of William 

 Maclure, the geologist, a building was 

 opened in 1840 to the public, abundantly 

 stored with the objects of nature, later suc- 

 ceeded by the structure at Nineteenth and 



Eace avenues ; at Washington, the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, embracing the aims of 

 the National Institute, was provided with 

 a museum, apologetic, perchance, to the 

 taste of an exacting critic, but still a dig- 

 nified place for public instruction. Boston, 

 from the exertions of the members of its 

 Society of Natural History, had dedicated 

 its museum on the 2d of June, 1864, when 

 Professors Wyman and Wm. B. Eogers,with 

 Mayor Lincoln, gave distinction to the cere- 

 mony. In Cambridge, as early as 18G0, 

 rapid progress had been 

 made on the new Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology 

 through the enthusiasm of 

 Agassiz, whose definite re- 

 lations to the creation of 

 the American Museum of 

 Natural History are pre- 

 sented later in this history. 

 Chicago had created a mu- 

 seum under the auspices of 

 Major Robert Kennicutt and 

 later through the stimulus 

 of Stimpson, and although 

 it was damaged by fire in 

 June, 1866, it still survived, 

 and furnished, long prior 

 to the erection of the great 

 Field Museum, entertain- 

 ment and information to the 

 public. 

 There had been indeed in New York, 

 outside of the immediate limits and in- 

 fluence of the Lyceum, efforts at museum 

 installation. But they were industrial or 

 historical or artistic and but slightinglj^ re- 

 garded the natural sciences. It must be 

 remembered that the impulse which finally 

 resulted in the Museum of Natural History 

 was twofold, and enclosed the divergent 

 tendencies towards nature and art, for the 

 American and Metropolitan museums were 

 simultaneous creations. 



These preliminary efforts to give a mu- 



