1869.] SENATE—No. 60. 5 
corps of assistants on whose co-operation I largely depend for 
its fulfilment. All the efforts of the officers of the Museum 
now tend toward such an arrangement of the collections as will 
render their exhibition advantageous and prompt. For a long 
time all those engaged with me have, at the sacrifice of their 
personal advantage, and with the most praiseworthy zeal and 
abnegation, devoted their time to labors rather manual than 
intellectual, yet of a kind which, from their very nature, require 
a trained workman,—one who has an extensive familiarity with 
objects of natural history. It is the misfortune of naturalists 
_ that so little of the distasteful and purely manual work con- 
nected with their studies can be performed by more ignorant 
assistants. In the laboratory, the investigator must be his own 
servant. My associates in the task of organizing the Museum 
have shrunk from no sacrifice of this kind. 
When the whole collection is so arranged that any specimen 
required for investigation can be reached with ease, and without 
loss of time, we shall all be rewarded by the comparative facil- 
ity for original research. I may add, that this is an advantage 
by which, according to the policy adopted by our institution, 
not only our small corps of investigators, but all students of 
natural history throughout the scientific world, will profit. 
This assertion is justified by the readiness with which speci- 
mens have been sent out from the Museum wherever they were 
wanted by any one engaged in original researches whose scien- 
tific character made him worthy of our confidence. Assistance 
of this kind has been given whenever it has been in our power 
to afford it. I only lament that the bulk of our materials, so 
heaped together for want of room as to make them often inac- 
cessible, and the very limited number of assistants in past 
years, so that there were not hands enough to put up the special 
collections to be sent abroad, have prevented us from exercising 
this liberality so largely, and with such promptness, as we hope 
to do hereafter. 
At the last meeting of the Board of Trustees, a vote was 
passed devoting the $75,000 granted to the Museum by the 
legislature of 1868, to the extension of the present building. 
While I rejoice in the prospect of this new building, as afford- 
ing the means for a complete exhibition of the specimens now 
stored in our cellars and attics, and encumbering every room of 
