1861.] MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE. ZOOLOGY. 55 



I 



further appropriations be made by the Trustees, except for the pur- 

 poses already indicated, until from some other source they receive the 

 needful means ; and they believe that none can be made from any 

 source now known to them, before the first of November, eighteen 

 hundred and sixty-one. 



The Committee further desire to express their earnest hope that 

 the munificent grant from the public treasury of the Commonwealth 

 may be funded, so that its income only shall be spent from year to 

 year. The reason is obvious. Without a sufficient and regular in- 

 come, any such institution as the Museum must soon fail to keep up 

 with the progress of knowledge or fulfil the great and beneficent pur- 

 poses for which it was founded. 



Your Committee do not make these suggestions without regret. 



•But the duty seems imperative. Nothing, perhaps, would be more 



injurious to the interests which it is the especial office of the Trustees 



to protect, than a debt, and your Committee hope that the Trustees 



will never contract or sanction one. 



But while your Committee do not wish to conceal the fact that the 

 funds at the disposition of the Trustees are nearly exhausted, or their 

 trust that a debt will never be created, they, at the same time, wish 

 to have it understood, that, in their judgment, whatever has been 

 done with the moneys heretofore appropriated by the Trustees, has 

 been done substantially and with good economy, and that not a dollar 

 has been spent, except for the precise purposes contemplated and 

 specified by the liberal donors of the fund. The building, which was 

 the main object of their contributions, has been erected in the most 

 solid and satisfactory manner, at less than the first appropriation 

 made for it, and is now found so well fitted for its purposes, that 

 Professor Agassiz, after his recent examination of the principal Mu- 

 seums in Europe, declares that he would not alter it in any respect, 

 if he could do so by a wish. The ample cases that line the rooms, 

 and the tables and other articles of furniture, have also been bought, 

 thus far, for less than the original appropriation, and are as satisfac- 

 tory to him as the building is. And all the great collections in 

 Zoology and Paleontology which have been so generously presented 

 by Professor Agassiz himself, or obtained by his exertions and influ- 

 ence from other sources, have been systematically arranged and 



