56 Report of the President 



There are several important factors which have made this 

 truly remarkable record possible. The foremost is the keen, 



personal interest which each member of the 

 £ ac ***JV n Department has taken in the work and the 



splendid spirit of cooperation resulting there- 

 from. A second factor is the generous attitude of the newly 

 organized Bureau of Visual Instruction of the Board of Edu- 

 cation, under the direction of Dr. Ernest L. Crandall, and the 

 friendly cooperation extended by Dr. Crandall through his 

 associate, Miss Rita Hochheimer. Dr. Crandall has devoted 

 the energies of his department mainly to increasing the visual 

 instruction apparatus in the schools, leaving to the Museum 

 the supplying of the slides and other illustrative material. A 

 third factor of great fundamental importance is the growth 

 of appreciation on the part of the teachers of the real value 

 of these methods of visual instruction. 



A greater number of nature study collections have been in 

 circulation than ever before, and they have been studied by 



1,176,055 pupils during the year. The extensive 

 Nature use of this material speaks well for its practical 



Collections teaching value, since nature study is no longer a 



required subject in the curriculum and its pres- 

 entation is dependent upon the interest and initiative of the 

 individual teacher. The loan material is composed of two 

 types of collections : The first consists of birds, insects, lower 

 invertebrates, woods, minerals, etc., of which there are many 

 duplicate sets available; the second consists of material assem- 

 bled for some specific purpose, i.e., classes in design, historical 

 pageants, etc. Comparison of the statistics for 1920 with those 

 for the preceding four years shows an interesting growth : 



1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 



Number of Collections 

 in Use 704 712 629 668 887 



Number of Schools in 

 Greater New York 

 Supplied 439 446 419 385 448 



Number of Pupils 

 Studying Collections. 1,118,322 1,075,076 790,346 860,992 1,176,055 



