HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM 



have hardly begun to treat. It is important to observe that this 

 floor will give us the Histoiy of the Origin of Civilization. We shall 

 have a passage from the anthropoid apes to the most primitive races 

 of men, and be able to trace the successive human cultures, as dis- 

 played only in Old World remains. Valuable collections are already 

 in the Museum illustrating these culture stages, but we need to sup- 

 plement them by others, and to give the entire collection arrangement 

 under the best scientific authorities. The subject is naturally one 

 where the American Museum for the first time touches the historian. 

 ASIATIC ANTHROPOLOGY and ARCHAEOLOGY will naturally 

 lead out of the European. Here again our collections are very limited. 

 Similarly we have only made a beginning in the INDO-MALAYAN 

 ARCHIPELAGO and in AUSTRALIA, which will complete this 

 Anthropological Circuit. 



FOURTH FLOOR.— The Fourth Floor is the finest in proportions 

 of any of the floors and best lends itself to the display of objects of 

 large size requiring considerable vertical space. It is therefore pecu- 

 liarly suited to the display of the PAST HISTORY OF THE EARTH, 

 on the east side, and of the anthropological collections of Africa, 

 Polynesia, the Philippines, China and Japan, and the Siberian tribes, 

 on the west side. Again, the circular arrangement of the halls in the 

 completed south plan enables us to present a perfect evolutionary 

 sequence on the east, and a natural geographic sequence on the 

 west. 



The Past History of the Earth, as told by fossils, begins with the 

 PALEOZOIC, or AGE OF MOLLUSKS, provided for by the great James 

 Hall Collection and additions which have been made to it, in its present 

 location, namely, the South Transept Hall. The collections await re- 

 arrangement, the elimination of certain parts which more properly 

 belong elsewhere, and the addition of palseogeographic maps showing 

 the past history of the American continent, based upon the researches of 

 Professor Schuchert of Yale University and others. The student at 

 this point begins with the first stages of life in the Cambrian and pre- 



[170] 



