REPORT 



To the Legislature of the State of New York : 



The Regents of the University submit to you, as required by 

 law, their fortieth annual report as trustees of the State Museum 

 of Natural History. 



In the last annual report the trustees of the museum called your 

 attention to the work of preparing the State Hall for its occupancy 

 for a museum, which was intrusted to them by a law passed in 

 1883. The full use of the building was only to come into the 

 hands of the museum when the State officers were provided with 

 proper accommodations in the Capitol. This has not yet been 

 accomplished, and the Comptroller, the Treasurer and the Engineer 

 and Surveyor still occupy parts of the building. Since the last 

 report, however, the clerk of the Court of Appeals has vacated 

 two rooms which he had occupied on the south-west corner of the 

 second story. These rooms are now used by the museum, one of 

 them being the quarters for the State Botanist and the large col- 

 lection of plants composing the State herbarium, which are under 

 his care. The other room is used by Professor Hall and Mr. Beecher 

 as an office. 



Progress has been made in removing the material from Professor 

 Hall's buildings to the rooms alloted to them in the State Hall. 

 The portion of material which has been removed is that which had 

 been used by Professor Hall in his publication of the Palaeontology 

 of the State. Rooms in the basement, on the north-east corner, 

 have been fitted up for the machinery used in making sections of 

 rock and sections of palaeontological specimens. These sections go 

 far towards revealing the proper inward construction of the ancient 

 inhabitants of the earth. They are now being studied with great 

 profit by those who are making palaeontology their specialty. As 

 rapidly as the State officers can be provided with accommodations 

 the rooms of the State Hall will be utilized for the State Museum. 



