48 Report of the President 



Although the city failed to provide an appropriation for 



local lecture centers, and in spite of the fact that the Trustees 



_. are devoting large sums of their own 



Lecture Center at ,-',-■,. ~ 



„ x , . _ money to public education, the Cura- 



Washington Irving J , , ' . , 



__. , ^ , , tor was authorized by the President to 



High School , • > , 



arrange for a series of lectures at the 



Washington Irving High School during the fall and winter. 



Accordingly a course of eight lectures for the elementary 



schools was begun in November. The attendance has been 



large and on several occasions the hall, which seats 1,500, has 



been filled. This, together with the enthusiastic reports of 



the teachers, again indicates the desirability of this form of 



Museum extension, and it is to be hoped that sufficient funds 



will be provided from some source to enable the early carrying 



out of this plan. 



From the very first year that nature study was introduced 



into the city schools, the teachers have relied upon the Museum 



to supply the necessary teaching material. 



_ , The system that has been built up meets 



Nature Study 



_ , t . the needs of teachers with the minimum of 



Collections rr , . _ „ , ,. 



effort on their part. Collections are deliv- 

 ered to the schools by the Museum messengers without expense 

 to school or teacher and are called for at the end of the loan 

 periods. During the year 1914, of the 550 public schools in 

 the city, 451 or about 80$ have been regularly supplied with 

 nature study material. The total number of schools supplied 

 is as follows: 



Manhattan 130 Richmond 23 



Brooklyn , 137 Corporate Schools 24 



Queens 54 High Schools and Colleges. . . 36 



Bronx 47 Private Schools and Others. . . 19 



One important feature of this work is the personal relation 

 established between the teacher and the Museum officers. 

 This is mutually helpful and enables us to enlarge the collec- 

 tions or prepare new ones as the case may require. Thus the 

 emphasis placed in the syllabus upon animals useful to man 

 and animals harmful to man has led to the addition of two 

 new cases to the loan series, namely, ten sets of economic 



