20 NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE REGENTS, 



Museum of Comparative Zoology, ) 

 Cambridge, Sept. 18, 1865. ) 



Dear Sir — I regret exceedingly father's absence, as he would most cheer- 

 fully have sent you all information in his power respecting the proposed 

 organization of the New. York State museum. At the suggestion of Prof. 

 Hall, I write you a few lines in answer to your circular, which I should 

 have done before had I not been absent from Cambridge. I shall not pre- 

 tend to say anything more than what I know of father's views respecting 

 such establishmentSi 



The great danger in this country with colleges and all scientific estab- 

 lishments has been in their number. Means which, if concentrated, would 

 have given to the United States two, or three at the utmost, great universi- 

 ties, endowed amply, and numbering among their teachers the best men of 

 the country, have resulted in scattering over the country some two hundred 

 small colleges, all of which repeat, to a certain extent, the same thing, are 

 compelled to maintain expenditure identical in all, such as forty or fifty 

 professors of the same branch, the same works repeated a great many times 

 in their diminutive libraries ; all this and many other things which will 

 readily suggest themselves to you, preventing the intellectual development 

 of any one of these colleges, and keeping them all down to a very low 

 standard. Now that the natural sciences are claiming such a large share 

 as an educational element, every institution which begins anew should 

 attempt, as much as possible, to take at the outset some one branch not 

 yet fully developed by any existing institution, and make that its specialty. 

 Let the Smithsonian Institution devote itself mainly to the development of 

 intercourse between scientific men of this country and Europe, and to fost- 

 ering original investigations by assisting them with books, instruments, &c. 

 Let the Philadelphia Academy, the Boston Society of Natural History, 

 devojte themselves to the publication of memoirs for the advancement of the 

 natural history of this country. Let Philadelphia retain its preeminence 

 in its collectien of birds, and remain the center of ornithology for the 

 United States. Let the Boston Society devote itself principally to develop 

 in its memoirs the taste for natural history, and to give to working natu- 

 ralists a place wLere they may have an opportunity of publishing their ori- 

 ginal researches. Let the museum at Cambridge be especially the great 

 center of comparative zoology, making use of paleontology only so far as it 

 is necessary to develop and contrast the former phases of existence on the 

 surface of our globe. Give to Cambridge a more extended field. 'Let us 

 here not be limited to one country, but extend our comparisons for any 

 quarter of the globe; make it a universal exposition of comparative crea- 

 tions. 



Let the State collection of New York take as its. basis the collections of 

 the geological survey, and make them the standard for all future geological 

 surveys of the country. No geological survey can ever be executed which 

 will not have to use as a standard for comparison the collections of New- 



