422 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VI., No. 145. 



when he came to this country, ten years had not 

 passed before he had here amassed collections not 

 only from America, but from all parts of the 

 world, which it would stagger many a university 

 to support. Yet liis aim was, not to found a 

 museum which should be a mere accumulation, 

 but one that " should have a well-combined and 

 clearly expressed educational value." The bequest 

 of his friend, Mr. Francis C. Gray, in 1858, of fifty 

 thousand dollars, was the initiation of the final 

 enterprise ; and when the new institution was in- 

 augurated, two years later, it possessed, besides 

 the Gray fund, a building erected by private sub- 

 scription to the amount of over $71,000, a fund of 

 $100,000 granted by the state through the personal 

 exertions of Agassiz, and the collections obtained 

 by his indomitable zeal. 



The bequest of Mr. Gray, quadrupling itseK in 

 two years, did not find Agassiz unprepared. In- 

 deed, it was the knowledge of plans, to the utmost 

 details of which he had devoted years of thought, 

 that had moved the gift of his friend. He would 

 have the museum represent in each department 

 the sum of our information in special zoology, 

 comparative anatomy, embryology, paleontology, 

 and zoological geography. He would have it il- 

 lustrate at once the structure and mode of growth 

 of animals, their order of succession in geological 

 times, and their geographical distribution upon the 

 surface of our globe ; the relations between the 

 animals of past time and those now hving, and 

 between the law of succession in the former, and 

 the laws of growth and disti'ibution in the latter. 



' ' A museum founded upon a comparative study 

 of living and fossil animals m connection with 

 their embryonic changes and their geographical 

 distribution could no longer be called simply a 

 zoological museum," said Agassiz in his inaugural 

 address : " oms is a museum of comparative 

 zoology." 



How large his expectation was may be seen by 

 what he wrote as early as 1858 : — 



"My hope is that there shaU arise upon the 

 grounds of Harvard a museum of natural history 

 which shall compete with the British museum 

 and with the Jardin des plantes. Do not say that 

 it cannot be done, for you cannot suppose that 

 what exists in England and France carniot be 

 reached in America. I hope, even, that we shall 

 found a museum which will be based upon a more 

 suitable foundation, and better qualified to advance 

 the highest interests of science, than these institu- 

 tions of the old world." 



By a strange coincidence, the foundation of the 

 museum dates from the publication of Darwin's 

 ' Origin of species.' Of course, so powerful a 

 movement in the scientific thought of the time 



could not fail to modify the problems which the 

 institution was intended to illustrate and to solve. 

 Yet the usefulness of the plans laid down for the 

 museum remains unimpaired by the new methods 

 of treating questions of afiinity, of origin, of geo- 

 graphical and geological distribution. Should the 

 synoptic, the systematic, the faunal, and the pale- 

 ontological collections cease to bear the interpreta- 

 tion given to them by the founder, their interest 

 and importance, even for the advocates of the new 

 biology, would not be one whit lessened. If the 

 anatomical, embry ©logical, synthetic, and other 

 series presented by the pupil of Cuvier from his 

 point of view, are differently considered to-day by 

 the followers of Darwin, they may, for this very 

 reason, have gained a general interest they did not 

 formerly possess. 



The plans of the founder have been realized, 

 perhaps, far beyond his most sanguine expecta- 

 tions ; and it has been reserved for his immediate 

 successor to see the establishment of a prosperous 

 school of natural history, amply provided with 

 laboratories, connected with a university, and 

 recognizing in the admmistration of its trusts the 

 claims of the college and of the advanced stu- 

 dents, as well as those of the original investigator. 

 Nor has it neglected the interests of specialists, 

 but has accumulated extensive collections, con- 

 veniently stored, and easily accessible to all who 

 are able to make a proper use of this material. 



The publications of the museum (eleven volumes 

 of bulletins, and thirteen of memoirs) give, with 

 the addition of the monographs thus far issued by 

 workers at the museum, a fair idea of the field 

 covered by its various departments, though they 

 do not sufficiently represent the original work 

 done by the teaching staff of the university and 

 its students. 



The library has grown from a few hundred 

 volumes to an important collection of biological 

 works, numbering over 17,000 volumes, exclusive 

 of pamphlets and of the Whitney library. 



In 1860 the building covered a space eighty by 

 sixty feet, and it contained, in all, sixteen rooms, 

 used as lecture-room, laboratories, store-rooms, and 

 exhibition-rooms. A visitor to the museum in 

 those early days would now find it difficult to rec- 

 ognize the rooms or their contents in the present 

 arrangement. During the early years of the insti- 

 tution, every thing had to be sacrfficed to the 

 exigencies of the rapidly accumulating collections. 

 But the difficulties involved in so large an under- 

 taking prevented Professor Agassiz from fairly 

 developing his schemes ; and it became evident 

 at the time of his death that only a radical re- 

 arrangement of the collections could give distinct 

 expression to his plans. 



