4 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



aided two students in geological and geographical work in Mon- 

 tana, Washington, and British Columbia. 

 A marble tablet inscribed 



In memory 



of 



Alexander Agassiz 



1835-1910 



Omnia quae hie vides monumentum 



has been set in the wall of the Entrance Hall (Oxford Street) of the 

 Museum. The tablet is the gift of Mr. Agassiz's sons, George 

 Russell Agassiz, Maximilian Agassiz, and Rodolphe Louis Agassiz. 



The Corporation has installed automatic sprinklers in the 

 boiler rooms, preparators' rooms, work shops, and photographic 

 rooms in the basement. The windows of a few rooms between the 

 Museum halls and the Zoological laboratories have been refitted 

 with resistant glass, and a very large proportion of the windows 

 throughout the whole Museum have been furnished with metal 

 weather strips. Tested to a limited extent a few years ago this 

 appliance gave most satisfactory results, and its introduction 

 throughout the Museum and especially in the basement during 

 the past winter showed at once that both for cleanliness and as 

 an economizer of fuel it will be of great and permanent usefulness. 

 Following the policy of recent years the renovation of the work 

 rooms and of the exhibition cases has been continued; three 

 rooms have been renovated this year and new exhibition cases 

 have been built for the systematic collection of mammals and for 

 the North American faunal collections. For the research col- 

 lections new cases have been built for the ornithological, herpeto- 

 logical, and entomological departments. 



To Dr. Thomas Barbour and Mr. Louis A. Shaw the Museum's 

 thanks are due for financial aid which has been used for improve- 

 ments in the work rooms and for their better equipment. 



Mr. John E. Thayer continues a most generous contributor to 

 the collections of the Museum. His gifts to the ornithological 

 department in many cases have anticipated its needs and have 

 made it a most effective study collection of the birds of the world. 



Through Mr. Thayer's liberality the Museum also possesses 

 the valuable series of letters and drawings of Alexander Wilson 

 and John J. Audubon, formerly the property of the late Joseph 

 M. Wade. The Wilsoniana contains seventy of Wilson's original 

 drawings of birds, a sketch of his school house, and one of the 



