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ornithologist, Gould, Philadelphia got a first-class 
ornithological museum. For craniologists, Dr. Mor- 
ton’s collection of about twelve hundred skulls is of 
interest. The collection of recent shells is said to be 
second in completeness only to that of the British 
museum, and is rich in originals used in the publica- 
tions of a large number of active scientific men in 
Philadelphia. 
Through Professor Joseph Leidy, the director of 
the museum, Philadelphia was the first place to pro- 
cure the remains of fossil mammals from the terri- 
tories of Wyoming, Dakota, and Nebraska. By this 
excellent savant, attention was called to those inex- 
haustible treasure-houses in the far west from which, 
since that time, a whole world of marvellous fossil 
animals has been unearthed. The interest of the 
specialist will be attracted by Professor Gabb’s col- 
lections made in California and Nevada, and by the 
petrifactions from the tertiary formation in Georgia 
and Alabama. The museum is also rich in Euro- 
pean objects. 
The interior arrangement is simple but practical. 
Sometimes the show-cases are rather crowded, and 
stand so near together that the light is not every- 
where sufficient, in spite of the high windows on all 
sides of the hall. Already in this comparatively new 
building there is, as in nearly all European museums, 
a lack of space. 
Naturalists will not leave Philadelphia without hav- 
ing seen Prof. E. D. Cope’s celebrated collection 
of fossil vertebrates. During my stay in Philadelphia, 
this indefatigable investigator was in New Mexico in 
order to continue the exhumations with which he 
now has been occupied for many years at a heavy ex- 
pense, and with much personal hardship. Very soon 
his elegant house in Pine Street became too small 
for the collected treasures, the house next to it had 
to be bought, and now it is filled from top to bottom 
with fossil bones. And again no space was left: the 
larger specimens, therefore, had to be placed in the 
cellars of a public building. Mr. Wortman, a former 
pupil and assistant of Professor Cope, was my amia- 
ble and well-informed guide through this improvised 
museum, where almost al] the rooms are filled nearly 
up to the ceiling with cases, shelves, drawers, trunks, 
and boxes, where one finds piled on the floor, or 
along the walls, enormous skulls of mastodons and 
Dinocerata, or bones of gigantic saurians, and where 
the visitor's eyes are delighted with several complete 
skeletons of mammals still remaining in their stony 
matrix. Besides a number of forms already known 
by way of pictures or descriptions, one may see here 
the remnants of several hundred fossil vertebrates of 
which we in Europe know hardly more than the 
names. Comparing the fossil mammals of the Paris 
basin with those found in North America in strata 
of the same period, we, discover a striking difference 
between the two faunas. 
The regions of geographical distribution for verte- 
brates were just as sharply limited during the tertiary 
period as nowadays. This is the reason why we find 
a nearly inexhaustible abundance of new orders and 
species in the so-called Bad Lands of western Amer- 
SCIENCE. 
(Vou. IIIL., No. 54. 
ica. Professor Cope is one of the most eminent au- 
thorities of our time in comparative anatomy and 
paleontology: he has bought the fine osteological col- 
lection of Hyrtl at Vienna, and is now busy in editing 
an extensive work, in which he intends to give de- 
scriptions, as well as pictures, of the numerous fossil 
mammals discovered by him. 
While Philadelphia has the oldest museum of North 
America, Washington is arranging the newest one. 
In the elegant, beautifully situated capital of the 
country, with its wide and clean but hardly animated 
streets, with its vast parks and magnificent edifices, 
the visitor will be surprised to find unfinished, not 
only the Washington monument, but also various 
other edifices. But if once all the enterprises which 
are now going on are finished, Washington will be 
one of the most beautiful cities of the world. Not 
far from the simple home of the President there is 
a park of about fifty acres, in which we find most 
imposing public buildings, among them the green- 
houses of the botanical garden, the Smithsonian in- 
stitution, and the National museum. The latter is e 
in a palace of red sandstone. The interior of the i 
tasteful building, in Normano-Gothic style,! contains 
in the centre a dome-like hall two hundred feet long, 
where various collections in a somewhat strange 
mixture are accommodated. Large glass cases with 
stuffed animals are put together with Indian curi- 
osities, models, and relief-maps, together with sam- 
ples of building-materials and ores. Part of the hall 
and a wing of the building are given to the geo- 
logical survey. In the other wing we find the 
excellently arranged prehistoric and ethnographical 
collection, under the direction of our countryman 
Karl Rau. The great variety of the tools and weap- 
ons made of stone, still used among some Indian 
tribes, which are exhibited here, is hardly less re- 
markable than the ability with which these savages 
work the brittle material. In this respect the Amer- 
ican autochthones have undoubtedly attained a higher 
civilization than the inhabitants of Europe during 
the stone period. For the present, the National mu- 
seum, as a whole, can be considered merely as the. 
beginning of a museum of almost universal charac- 
ter; but, with the enormous means which are at the 
disposal of the central government, it needs only a 
few influential and energetic men to develop great 
things out of this promising germ. 
A glance at the growth of the American museum 
of natural history in New York shows what energy, 
and readiness to sacrifice, may accomplish within a 
few years. In January, 1869, a few scientific friends 
met, and decided to found in New York, the metrop- 
olis of North America, a museum of natural his- 
tory, which was to correspond with the means and 
the importance of this city, and to give its inhabit- 
ants an opportunity for recreation and instruction. — 
Within a few weeks forty-four thousand dollars were 
subscribed. Out of this money the collection of birds — 
made by Prince Maximilian of Wied was bought. — 
Many other objects were given; and very soon the 
1 The writer has here confused the Smithsonian and museum 
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