
Seth a lal 


PURPOSES OF MUSEUMS 125 
While the American Museum of Natural History cannot claim to 
have originated the idea of displaying animals amid their natural sur- 
roundings, it was the first large museum in this country to adopt this 
method which it has since carried out on a large scale in (see Reprint 
“The Story of Museum Groups”’) the well-known habitat groups. How 
it has been developed the visitor may judge by comparing the group of 
Robins with the great Florida Group and the Hopi Group. 
In the Museum were also developed the methods of preparing and 
mounting the skeletons of extinct animals that have resulted in such 
mounts as Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, and the series showing 
the development of the horse, so that they might be something more 
than an assemblage of uninteresting bones. 
The Museum not only maintains exhibits ‘“‘for the edification of the 
H public,” but supplements the educational work performed 
ow These : ; 
Purposes Are by these and their accompanying labels by lectures and 
Carried Out publications of a popular nature. A course of evening 
lectures is given every Spring and Fall for the Members, to 
Lectures which admission is to be had by ticket; also courses of 
Science Stories are given on Saturday mornings for the 
children of members. Another series of lectures, free to the public, is 
given in conjunction with the Board of Education on Tuesday and 
Saturday evenings. Still another series, under the direction of the 
Museum’s Department of Public Education, is given for the children in 
the Public Schools, and there are special lectures for the blind provided 
for by the Thorne Memorial Fund. The educational work of the 
Museum is carried still farther by means of its circulating collections 
for illustrating nature study which are sent free to the schools of Greater 
’ New York. The extent to which these collections are used is shown 
by the following statistics for the last five years: 
1912 1913 1914 1915 1916* 
Number of Collections in use 537 597 675 671 704 
Number of Schools of Greater 
New York Supplied 491 501 470 473 439 
Number of Pupils Studying 
the Collections 1,275,890] 1,378,599] 1,273,853] 1,238,581] 1,118,322 
be oa gd of the infantile paralysis epidemic when school work and visits of scholars were greatly 
