18 Report of the President 



theses, we aim to present clearly the facts of nature and 

 let these facts tell their own story and exert an influence 

 more convincing than that of precepts or of books. 



During the coming fifty years we hope to continue this 

 kind of education and to do it still more widely and effec- 

 tively. In view of its future great possibilities we regard 

 nature-education as still in its infancy. We have new ideas 

 and plans for this larger work, we have the intelligence and 

 the sense of public responsibility, but to go ahead we must 

 have more space and more means. 



Our fifty-first annual report is regretfully opened with the 

 statement that the Museum as a whole is now going back- 

 ward, not forward. It is like a grown man 

 Museum confined in the clothing of a youth. While 



Backward progress is being made in many directions, it 

 is not symmetrical, and in order to secure 

 an harmonious educational treatment and to arrange truth- 

 fully our present collections, the Museum needs double the 

 space which it now occupies. It is fifteen years since the 

 building has been enlarged and during this time our col- 

 lections have nearly doubled. This is not said in criticism 

 or complaint of anyone. The Board of Estimate and 

 Apportionment of the City has recently manifested its con- 

 fidence in the institution by increasing the annual main- 

 tenance fund fifty per cent.; the Trustees and friends of the 

 Museum have been most generous both in gifts and be- 

 quests; the Board of Education is also in friendly coopera- 

 tion with our school work. 



The fact that we are now going backward is owing, first, 

 to the unprecedented growth of our collections, second, to 

 the actual lack of available building funds by the City, and, 

 third, to the interruption by the war of building extension 

 through the personal subscriptions of the Trustees which 

 was planned in 1913. This movement was well under way 

 and would have given us a SOUTHEAST WING 

 (ASIATIC HALL) and COURT BUILDING (HALL OF 

 OCEAN LIFE) had not the war come on. 



