Report of the President. 1 1 



Topeka & Santa Fe system, Denver & Rio Grande, Erie 

 system, Chicago & Northwestern, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. 

 Paul, the Burlington system, the Northern Pacific, Great 

 Northern, Canadian Pacific and the Mexican Central and 

 Mexican International Railway Companies. 



Attendance. — The use of the collections by public and 

 private educational institutions is a marked feature of the 

 work of the Museum; many of these pupils and teachers come 

 from nearby towns and cities, nearly twenty per cent repre- 

 senting schools in New Jersey, while delegations from Con- 

 necticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia are noteworthy. The 

 record shows that 361 teachers and 4,959 pupils made use of 

 the collections during the year. The total attendance of 

 visitors during the year was 461,026. 



The Museum was closed in the evening during the Summer 

 months to permit needed repairs to the lighting plant to be 

 made. 



Department of Mineralogy. — -The gift to the Museum by 

 Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan of the famous Bement collection of 

 minerals at the close of the year 1900 was briefly noticed in 

 my last Annual Report, but an extended reference to this col- 

 lection, which is one of the most valuable individual gifts ever 

 received by the Museum, could not be made at the time of pre- 

 paring that report, because the specimens had not then been 

 unpacked and placed in the exhibition cases. The acquisition 

 of this immense collection at once made desirable the erection 

 of an independent Department of Mineralogy. The new de- 

 partment was organized at the beginning of the year, and the 

 Trustees installed as Curator, Mr. Louis P. Gratacap, who 

 had had the care of the minerals for several years, while they 

 were still under the charge of the Curator of Geology. The 

 shells remaining in the central hall on the fourth floor of the 

 Museum building were removed to the fifth floor, the minerals 

 of the former Museum collection were removed from ex- 

 hibition in the desk cases in the western half of the same hall, 

 and from the smaller hall, and the space thus freed was de- 



