12 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Some radical changes have taken place during the past year in 

 the organization of the Museum. The Department of Petrogra- 

 phy has been merged into that of Mineralogy. Professor Wolff 

 having been placed in charge of the collection of mineralogy, it 

 was natural that he should transfer his former department into 

 the section of Mineralogy. 



Professor Smyth will also hereafter find such facilities as may 

 be given to mining geology in the same section of the Museum, 

 until technical and applied geology, or geology as a whole, are in 

 their turn transferred to more spacious and more appropriate 

 quarters than those they now occupy. 



It is becoming self-evident that, with the great increase in the 

 number of Professors and students of the Zoological, Geological, 

 and Geographical Departments in the University, the continuance 

 of their present intimate connection with the Museum is only a 

 question of time and money. 



We are rapidly approaching the condition when each one of the 

 Natural History Departments must work in its own quarters 

 independently, supervising its own instruction, publishing its own 

 researches, and having the charge of its own collections ; all 

 holding, in short, the same relation to one another that the Bo- 

 tanical and the Mineralogical sections and the Peabody Museum 

 now hold to the University Museum. 



This naturally brings up the question of carrying on the vari- 

 ous departments of Natural History contained in the University 

 Museum quadrangle. With the gradually decreasing means now 

 at their disposal, we cannot hope even to keep up with the progress 

 of science. For a healthy increase of the work done in the differ- 

 ent sections of the Museum a very large annual income is needed, 

 — two or three times larger at least than is now at our disposal. 



With our present resources we are barely keeping alive, and 

 the future has nothing in prospect beyond the merest routine 

 work. Each of the Departments needs funds for additional Pro- 

 fessors and Assistants, as well as for the running expenses of each 

 Professorship, to enable them to carry on original research. An 

 annual income is needed to send out expeditions both on land and 

 at sea to collect material connected with the questions of the day, 

 and a publishing fund large enough to allow the publication of the 

 original work of the members of each Department, be they Pro- 

 fessors or students. With the enormous increase in the number 



