886 The American Naturalist. [October, 
EDITORIALS. 
—PuBLi¢ spirited citizens of Chicago have formed a corporation for 
the purpose of creating and sustaining a museum, which shall furnish 
to the publie of the city an educational exhibition. It is an opportune 
time for such a project, as there is much in the Columbian Exhibition 
that can be obtained, which would serve as a nucleus round which a 
great museum may be collected. It is proposed that the museum shall 
be located near to Jackson Park and the University, and for the pres- 
ent the California building, one of the largest of this class in the park, 
is to be utilized for this purpose. The corporators have made an 
excellent beginning in appointing Prof. F. W. Putnam the managing 
director. Thus a scientific stamp is given to the enterprise at the out- 
set, and its future value as an educational medium is secured. It is 
expected that Professor Putnam will organize the museum into depart- 
ments, and will place over each a competent head, who will make the 
institution a medium of original research as well as of exhibition, as 
is the case with all the great museums of the world. It will thus 
become useful, not only to the general public, but to the University 
and to the Academy of Sciences. The corps of scientific experts con- 
nected with the museum and the University, would revive the Academy 
of Sciences, which has been dormant of latter times. This would give 
it a position in the country second to none west of the Allegheny 
Mountains, instead of being, as in late years, less productive than the 
societies of Cincinnati and St. Louis. If Chicago is the city she claims 
to be, she will do this, and more. She will have an Academy of 
Sciences which consists exclusively of scientific men. Only such a 
membership can give an Academy its proper position in the world, and 
prevent the organization from being a travesty of what it ought to be 
and might be. 
—TuHE Postmaster General of the last administration, Mr. Wana- 
maker, proposed, it is said, to change the names of the post-offices 
throughout the country which are duplicates of those previously given 
to older offices. Perhaps Mr. Wanamaker found the task too onerous ; 
at all events it has never been accomplished. It is hardly likely the 
present administration will undertake it, as it would savor too much of 
“ paternalism ” for democrats to tolerate, but as duplicate names have 
become an annoying evil, a future administration may make the needed 
