FEBRUARY 15, 1884.] 
seum proper should be in charge of assistants whose 
uties are so arranged as to leave a good part of their 
time free for original research; the museum as a 
whole forming an important branch of the natural- 
history department of the university, with which its 
assistants and professors are intimately connected. 
An enumeration of the contents and uses to which 
the space is devoted will give a better idea of the 
aims of the museum than a lengthy description. 
Exhibition-rooms. 
Synoptic room: synopsis of the animal kingdom, 
living and fossil. 
Five systematic rooms for the systematic collec- 
tions of mammalia, birds, fishes, mollusca, radiates, 
and protozoa; and their galleries for reptiles, insects, 
and crustacea. 
Seven faunal rooms and galleries: North American, 
South American, African (including Madagascar), 
Indian, Australian, Europeo-Siberian,! Atlantic,} 
Pacific. 
Four rooms for the paleontological collections. 
Two rooms for the paleozoic, one for the mesozoic, 
and one for the tertiary, as follows: Silurian and De- 
vonian,! carboniferous and Jura,! cretaceous,! ter- 
tiary.} 
The work-rooms for the assistants of the museum, 
and the storage-rooms, which are also intended as 
work-rooms of their special subjects, are distributed 
as follows, in addition to a large receiving-room and 
a general workshop: — 
The alcoholic collections stored in the basement 
occupy four rooms devoted to fishes, two rooms for 
fishes and reptiles, one room for birds and mammals, 
one room for mollusca, one room for crustacea, one 
room for the other invertebrates. 
The entomological department is to occupy event- 
ually four gallery-rooms of the first story. 
The work rooms and storage-rooms of the fifth 
story are filled by collections occupying five rooms 
devoted to birds and mammals, three for skins and 
eggs and two for skeletons, one for crustacea, one 
1 Not yet open to the public. 
SCIENCE. 
207 
for mollusca, one for fish and reptile skeletons, one 
for the collection of dry invertebrates (corals, echin- 
oderms, sponges, etc.), two for fossil vertebrates 
(exclusive of fishes). 
The remaining paleontological collections are 
crowded into four work and storage rooms. ‘There 
are two work-rooms for the geological and lithological 
department. Four rooms are devoted to the library 
of the museum, and one room for the office of the 
curator. There are also a large general lecture- 
room, three laboratories for students in biology, 
three laboratories for students in geology and paleon- 
tology, with two smaller private rooms for the in- 
structors. With the biological laboratories will be 
connected also a large room for an aquarium for both 
fresh-water and marine animals, and another room 
for a vivarium, both of which are in the basement 
of the building. 
This will give, in all, seventeen rooms devoted to 
the exhibition of collections for the public; ten work 
and storage rooms in the basement, for the alcoholic 
collections; thirteen work and storage rooms for the 
dry zoological collections; eight similar rooms for 
the paleontological and geological collections; and 
thirteen rooms devoted to the laboratories, lecture- 
rooms, and library connected with the instruction 
given at the museum; the arrangement being such, 
that, whenever any departments (as, for instance, the 
geological and geographical, or the anatomical, or 
any other) outgrow their present quarters, room can 
be made for them by extensions of the building, for 
a long time to come, without interfering with the 
plans which have been carried out thus far. 
In adopting a small unit for the size of the rooms 
(30x 40 feet), all attempts at exhibition-rooms, impos- 
ing from their size, were deliberately abandoned. 
It is aimed only to place before the public such por- 
tions of the collections as shall become instructive; 
and in the storage and work rooms the appliances 
for storage aim at economy of space, and are in- 
tended, while they do not neglect the careful preser- 
vation of the collections, to give to the assistants 
and students the freest and quickest possible access 
to them. 
RECENT PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCTETIES. 
Cambridge entomological club, 
Feb. &. — Mr. G. Dimmock called attention to some 
curious habits of the common European earwig, For- 
ficula auricularia, a specimen of which he had kept 
in confinement several months. These insects are 
omnivorous, but apparently prefer insects as food, 
eating their own species greedily. Although to all 
appearances blind, except to the presence or absence 
of light, the specimen above mentioned captured fleas 
(Pulex irritans) with ease in an enclosure about five 
centimetres in diameter. No notice was taken of a 
flea put in the enclosure until the flea actually touched 
the earwig, when the latter would rush after the flea, 
| 
palpitating with the antennae rapidly, and thus keep- 
ing on his track. If the flea escaped from beneath 
the antennae of the earwig, the latter would find him 
again in a moment, and the amusing chase would be 
renewed, to end in the sure seizure of the flea in the 
mouth-parts of the earwig. The earwig was a glut- 
ton, and would often eat a large number of fleas or 
other insects in succession, at the end of his repast his 
abdomen being much distended. Mr. 8. H. Seud- 
der exhibited a specimen and drawings of an arachnid 
from the coal-measures of Arkansas. ‘Two years ago 
Karsch figured a similar form from the coal of Prus- 
sian Silesia, under the generic name Anthracomartus, 
and Kusta has just described another from carbo- 
