10 



The new lecture hall was prepared for our use last autumn. 

 Hon. A. S. Draper, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 

 was present at the opening lecture, and made an address, of 

 which the following is an extract : 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : I feel happy this morning. I 

 feel like congratulating everybody upon this auspicious occasion — for such it is. 

 I congratulate the Museum, the Board of Management of this Museum, which 

 has been energetic enough, and broad-gauge enough, and vigorous enough, to 

 ask for and plan out this magnificent lecture hall, opening, as it does, the way 

 for the development of a new idea in educational work. I feel like congratu- 

 lating the City of New York, which has been munificent enough to provide the 

 means with which to erect an extension to this great institution, containing the 

 most magnificent lecture hall upon the continent, if not in the world. I feel 

 like congratulating the cause of education, too, because I believe, and believe 

 sincerely, that we are entering upon a new and more promising phase of educa- 

 tional progress than we have been familiar with. This visual instruction which 

 has been undertaken in this Museum, first upon a very small scale and gradually 

 broadened out and extended until its future prospects appear unlimitable, is 

 doing more for the training of progressive teachers than any other single line of 

 work which is being undertaken by modern educators. I have no doubt about 

 it whatever. It presents educational processes to more than one of the senses — 

 to two of them, to the eye as well as to the ear — and it presents those processes 

 in an attractive way ; and not only in an attractive way, but in an impressive 

 way. We sit here and look upon these foreign scenes, and we grow with them. 

 But few of us, comparatively, have had the opportunity of going to foreign 

 lands, and mingling with these monuments of intelligence, the culture and the 

 progress of those lands ; but we can sit here, before these sublime views, and 

 learn almost as much of the conditions which obtain in those lands as we can 

 by going there ourselves. You have no idea of the extent to which this experi- 

 ment has attracted attention. There is scarcely a day in which I do not receive 

 enquiries from other States concerning the visual instruction which has been 

 carried on so successfully at the American Museum of Natural History. This 

 thing is attracting the attention of the authorities at Washington. I have no 

 doubt but that it is to play in the future a most generous, important and effective 

 part in educational work. 



We may be pardoned for quoting here an extract of a letter from 



Hon. John Eaton : 



"As United States Commissioner of Education for sixteen years, I had an 

 opportunity of observing the marvelous development of your Museum, and of 

 its instructive work. The change to your present commodious hall and the im- 

 proved facilities for illustration is gratifying beyond measure. The aim of these 

 lectures ; the instruction of the children of the people through the teachers ; 



