644 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



similar purpose. Heathen culture of past ages ought not to shame the intelli-^ 

 gence of the present day. The committee appointed to establish a memorial to 

 the late Prof Louis Agassiz decided that " The most fitting memorial must be the 

 completion of his life's work. The completion of the museum in accordance with 

 his plans and its liberal endowment, would be of infinite value to the educational 

 interests of the whole country." Dr. Newberry, State Geologist of Ohio and 

 Professor in Columbia College, New York, says in regard to natural history col- 

 lections : " To the public at large they arrest attention and excite interest, the 

 first step toward scientific education in the individual or community." The late 

 Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, also says : '' They are well calcu- 

 lated to arrest attention and give definite impressions." Dr. Winchell, of Michi- 

 gan University, says : " A donation of natural history specimens is a monument 

 not only aere perennius but acre utilius. Would that our people might learn, like 

 the Germans, to place less faith in brick and mortar, and more in books and the 

 materials of science." Seeing a thing impresses the mind more forcibly than read- 

 ing or hearing about it. 



Ward's gigantic restored mammoth, as large as a house of moderate size, and 

 his casts of monstrous animals of ages past, are grand educators because they call 

 attention to natural objects and excite a desire to know their history. None can 

 look upon them without astonishment and increased mental activity. Less strik- 

 ing specimens are, in their degree, equally potent in the same direction. A com- 

 plete series of natural history specimens gives an ordinarily thoughtful spectator, 

 or even a casual observer, many ideas in regard to the classification and relations 

 or affinities of past and present organisms, their geographical distribution and 

 grouping in different localities, and many other facts which can hardly be obtain- 

 ed in any other way. In short, it gives ample illustration of all that science has 

 thus far deciphered of the plan of creation. The Agassiz memorial committee 

 say: "The Museum he labored for is a presentation of the animal kingdom — 

 fossil and living — arranged so as to picture the creative thought. The study of 

 such a subject is the highest to which the human mind can aspire." A good 

 museum should show, first, as full a representation as practicable of all the 

 quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects, plants, and fossils, which together constitute 

 the complete fauna and flora of the vicinity in which it stands, and then, as soon 

 as possible, of the whole territory represented by its friends and patrons. Its 

 collections in botany should illustrate every obtainable peculiarity of vegetable 

 structure, in wood, bark, root, leaf, flower and fruit. In the line of zoology 

 there should be a full showing of the whole animal kingdom. In agricultural 

 sections especial attention should be given to entomology, than which nothing can 

 be of more interest to grain, fruit and vegetable cultivators, who lose millions of 

 dollars annually by the ravages of insects. The cabinet should associate with 

 the various noxious and beneficial insects, in their several stages, the food on 

 which they live, their parasites and victims, so as io present to the eye an instructive 

 history of each, such as every farmer's son, to say the least, should be familiar 

 with. The mineral and fossil collections should show the characteristics of every 



