+ 
Academic year the new buildings and collections represent an 
additional expenditure of more than $500,000, in addition to the 
current expenditure. The ground covered by the additional 
building measures about 9,500 square feet. The resources at 
the disposal of the Director in 1873 came from the income of 
invested funds amounting to about $185,000. At the present 
moment, these amount to over $580,000. Ten years ago our 
departmental Library numbered some 5,000 volumes. Since that 
time it has increased to 16,000 volumes. 
The temporary quarters provided for the instruction then given 
at the Museum afforded no facilities for the more accurate work 
now required in many branches of the Biological and Geological 
Departments. Although our present laboratories, still in their 
first year of service, are not equipped as I hope to see them, they 
afford even now ample facilities for instruction and investigation, 
as compared with those heretofore available at Cambridge. 
The publications of the Museum, giving the results of investiga- 
tions by specialists or by Assistants of the Museum, the materials 
for which have been drawn from our collections, have been 
rapidly issued. Volumes IV. to X. of the Bulletins, and Volumes 
IV. to IX. of the Memoirs, have been published during the last 
ten years. 
Already, in 1855, the late Edward Forbes saw the importance 
of geographical displays as applied to the geological structure 
and products of the colonies of Great Britain, in connection with 
the Jermyn Street Museum of Practical Geology. He protested . 
against the simple and single systematic arrangement, as not 
covering the ground necessary to make the Museum practically 
useful. He further dwelt on the fact, that a museum as such, not 
connected with an educational institution, was of very little use to 
the public beyond its value as a cyclopedia of reference. 
We have attempted to build up an institution of that kind, and 
under our present conditions it is now possible to form some idea 
of the success of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, based as 
it is upon a plan essentially different from that of other like insti- 
-tutions. Our Exhibition Rooms, for instance, are comparatively 
small, each one devoted to a special subject, but so combined that, 
when taken together, they illustrate the animal kingdom as a 
whole in its general relations, and in its geographical and palzon- 
tological range and distribution. They are intended not only to 
