Art and Industrial Life of the City 23 



practical school life of Pasteur's discoveries fifty years ago ; 

 now they are part and parcel of the education of youth. 

 With an increased idealism in home and family life, Gal- 

 ton's principles of eugenics announced in 1884 are slowly 

 penetrating the school mind and conscience. 



As an extreme illustration of a less practical kind, when 

 the Museum started its Department of Vertebrate Pal- 

 aeontology in 1891, there were probably not ten school 

 children in the City of New York who knew what a dinosaur 

 was. There are now some hundreds of thousands who 

 know something about dinosaurs, for there are few children 

 visiting the Museum who do not ask for the big fossils. 

 These animals are now household words in the press, in 

 school and college text-books; they crowd the illustrated 

 pages of our newspapers ; they form part of our language 

 and literature, in art and in caricature. The American 

 Museum has expended about a million dollars in this one 

 department. It now easily leads the world in exhibits and 

 collections of vertebrate fossils, and, although these fossils 

 are at present uncouthly crowded and arranged for want of 

 building space, they still possess great educational value. 

 Anyone who is skeptical about this should note the close 

 observation by the boys and girls of the animals of our 

 ancient North American world. We are employing similar 

 means effectively in Astronomy, through the gift by Mr. 

 Edward D. Adams of the painting of the solar eclipse, by 

 Howard Russell Butler. 



ART AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE OF THE CITY 



The possibility of the wide educational influence of the 

 Museum in the art and industrial life of the City was 

 . , .. . , demonstrated by the special Exhibition of In- 



Industrial . J . c 



Art dustnal Art in Textiles and Costumes, held in 



Exhibition t h e Museum in November. The primary pur- 

 pose of this exhibition was to show how Museum material 

 could serve as the inspiration for designs in textiles and in 

 costumes. The exhibition was installed under the direction 



