THE AMERICAN MUSEUM IDEAL 



BY 



President Henry Fairfield Osborn 



"***Next, a spacious, wonderful garden, wherein whatsoever plant the 

 sun of divers climates, out of the earth of divers moulds, either wild 

 or by the culture of man, brought forth, may be, with that care that 

 appertaineth to the good prospering thereof, set and cherished; this 

 garden to be built about with rooms to stable in all rare beasts and to 

 cage in all rare birds, with two lakes adjoining, the one of fresh water, 

 the other of salt, for like variety of fishes. And so you may have in 

 small compass a model of universal nature made private. The third, 

 a goodly huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite 

 art or engine hath made rare in stuff, form, or motion; whatsoever 

 singularity, chance, and the shuffle of things hath produced ; whatsoever 

 nature hath wrought in things that want life and may be kept, shall be 

 sorted and included.***" 



— New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon, 1622-1624. 



The American Museum of Natural History, in cooperation 

 with its sister institutions, the Botanical Garden, the Zoological 

 Park and the Aquarium, is beginning to fulfill the dream of the 

 Natural Philosopher, Francis Bacon, namely, to bring together 

 the plants, the animals, the "rare beasts," "rare birds," "variety of 

 fishes" — "whatsoever nature hath wrought in things that want 

 life and may be kept," so that we "may have in small compass a 

 model of universal nature made private." The founder of induc- 

 tive science, if he could visit the City of New York today, would 

 find all these wonders of nature — living, lifeless, and extinct — 

 gathered from every clime and every continent, from the Arctic 

 and Antarctic Seas, from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, 

 from Polynesia, and now at last from Australia. 



It was inevitable that the American Museum should become a 

 World Museum, as New York has become a World City and 

 as the United States has become a World Power, in the best 

 sense of the diffusion of light and learning, the basis of true 

 civilization, which rests in every country, as with us, in a knowl- 

 edge of and obedience to the Laws of Nature. As the beneficent 

 work of the Rockefeller Foundations spreads the laws of health 

 in all parts of the world, as the Smithsonian Institution and the 

 Carnegie Institution extend American scientific research the 

 American Museum is fulfilling its ideal when it sends its able 

 and devoted explorers, world-wide, to gather and compare both 



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