OF THE UNITEK STATES 445 



organic life arose upon the surface of the globe. Not only this — 

 its evolution — but its distribution, and thus to account for the 

 fact why one country has one kiud of a flora and fauna, and an- 

 other country another kind. 



But museums and the minds that give them birth and control 

 them, evolve and develop as does anything else, and along these 

 lines, every generation is marked by improvement and progress. 

 With the future will come the ideal, educational museum of biol- 

 ogy; and this being true, our interest in these institutions as they 

 now exist should in no way be lessened. We should study them 

 as they grow, and constantly help their evolution toward better 

 ends, and their true purposes. In my lifetime I have studied a 

 few of the zoological museums in our larger cities, and written 

 about them, but circumstances have been such that the major 

 share of my attention has been directed toward the National 

 Museum, of Washington, including the Smithsonian Institution. 



The Ornithological Hall of this latter is a very interesting 

 room, and will well exemplify what I have just said above in 

 regard to the present condition of modern museums in this coun- 

 try. Of this hall I am enabled to offer here an excellent picture, 

 taken for me from the left-hand side of the end gallery at the east 

 extremity of the room. This gallery corresponds with the one 

 seen in the other end in the far distance in the picture. There, 

 overhead, is suspended a California condor in the act of flight, 

 while in the gallery itself are mounted specimens of various kinds 

 of ostriches, the place being a passage from the long side gal- 

 leries upon either hand. Of these, the south one is occupied by 

 Mr. Ridgway and his assistants, while the one opposite is occu- 

 pied by Mr. James E. Benedict, assistant curator of the depart- 

 ment of marine invertebrates. Similar galleries occur on the 

 eastern half of the hall, and these are for the conchologists, there 

 being a part of the shell exhibit in cases down the entire mid- 

 length of the floor below, as may be observed in the illustration. 



To this hall there are midway north and south entrances, while 

 at the east end one passes by double doors into the executive 

 part of the building, and at the opposite end into another very 

 large exhibition department containing a superb display of cor- 

 als, marine invertebrates, with fish, and casts of reptiles, and so 

 on. Near this west end door there is a narrow stairway that 

 leads up to Mr. Ridgway's corridor, and to one side of it a de- 

 scending passage to the "' west basement " below. In the for- 



