REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I912 H 



of Education; and as such its ideals of research have never 

 faltered or been contravened. Now, by virtue of the equipment 

 for it of extensive museum halls, it enters by force and by 

 preference into more immediate and direct touch with the citi- 

 zens. The burden is laid upon it to bring home to the people, 

 by visual appeal, the meaning of all that has been said and done 

 in science during the years past. The " State Museum " has 

 long been a statutory designation, intimating scientific collec- 

 tions brought together for the exposition of our natural 

 resources but in reality implying and covering the investigations 

 of these resources themselves. At no time in the history of the 

 organization has there been an adequate museum ; not once 

 in all its career have the people been able to come into actual touch 

 with the materials on which the published scientific works have been 

 founded or to learn through their own eyes the real meaning of the 

 resources and of the operations of nature which have been por- 

 trayed on the thousands of pages and plates of our public reports. 



The fact that this time has now arrived, that capacious quarters 

 are about to be fully equipped for the reception of the material 

 objects of science, brings, in effect, a new function to this division 

 — that of making an efficacious and impressive contribution to the 

 education of the people into these sources of knowledge, in a build- 

 ing devoted throughout to the official diffusion of knowledge. 



There are certain aspects of this new function that are proper 

 in this public report at a time when the equipment of this museum 

 of science lies just a step ahead. The first of these, 

 first in significance to those on whom this large duty de- 

 volves, is the fact that thus far the Museum has been the 

 repository of the materials brought together by men engaged in 

 the solution of scientific problems; these materials are not in 

 any large sense conspicuous objects, carefully selected for special 

 purposes of display, or to tell their own story. The collections 

 of the Museum are very large, as state museums go, but if this 

 large amount of material now contained in thousands of boxes, 

 drawers and cases, were to be so divided that one part should 

 comprise all that would arouse the interests of the inexpert, the 

 latter would be but a slender fraction of the whole. 



In the science of paleontology, a science of which the State of 

 New York has for years been the especial patron, this fact is 

 preeminently true. The Museum resources herein are large, but 

 of this large accumulation there is only a small part that can be 



