THIRD REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I906 7 



our work helps to palliate the existing situation and make our 

 present embarrassments endurable. 



The most telling event of the year in this division of the work of 

 the State, that most fraught with gratification for the present and 

 significance for our future development, is the action of the last 

 Legislature in making the preliminary appropriations for a building 

 to embrace and provide for the State Museum and its attendant 

 offices. Our appeals to the Legislature for this end began more than 

 20 years ago, and for all this long time we have labored under con- 

 stantly growing disadvantages and embarrassments. The event how- 

 ever obliterates past discomfort and reconciles us to the present con- 

 dition which must perforce grow still more constrained until the 

 relief arrives. 



As a matter of record the present distribution of the scientific 

 collections is here restated. 



A Geological Hall. Here are the offices of the State Botanist 

 with the herbarium, of the State Entomologist with the collections of 

 insects, of the Assistant State Geologist, the Mineralogist and the Zo- 

 ologist. These office quarters have unavoidably displaced a very con- 

 siderable part of the collections, as the first two officials named were 

 formerly located in the Capitol and the other offices were on the 

 first floor and in the basement so far as they existed at all. Here are 

 also the workrooms of the Archeologist and Taxidermist. There is 

 an exhibition of zoologic material occupying the fourth or top floor, 

 of rocks and fossils filling such part of the third floor as is not 

 occupied for offices, and all the second floor; the collections in in- 

 dustrial geology and mineralogy and a considerable part of those in 

 ornithology are now stored in the old lecture room. In the basement 

 and cellar are stored in boxes all the collections which have won 

 grand prizes and gold medals at the recent expositions at Buffalo 

 and St Louis. 



B State Hall. The offices of the Director, Geologist and 

 Paleontologist and his staff are in this building, which also contains 

 the most valuable part of the large paleontologic collections of the 

 Museum. These are stored in several thousand drawers and boxes. 

 In the basement is the extensive rock-cutting plant and machine 

 shop. Within recent years three of these offices have been sur- 

 rendered to the Corporation Tax Bureau and one basement room to 

 the State Engineer. 



C Capitol. The corridors on the fourth floor at the western 

 end and the landing of the western stairway contain a series of 

 cases filled with such part of the archeologic collections as can now 



