4 



This requires only a change in the roof, substituting a fire-proof 

 roof for the old one, and the cutting down the gallery windows. 

 The latter has already been done, and the increase of light in 

 the galleries is very marked, besides the improvement in the 

 external appearance of the building. 



This addition will allow for the complete arrangement and 

 exhibition to the public of the zoological collections. Although 

 the additional room gained on the floors not devoted to exhi- 

 bition will enable us to do much preparatory work for the 

 exhibition of the palseontological and geological collections, 

 little can be placed on permanent exhibition in those depart- 

 ments until the rooms now occupied for the different courses of 

 instruction given at the Museum are vacated. These rooms 

 are all intended for exhibition rooms in the above departments, 

 and their place is to be supplied eventually by fitting lecture- 

 rooms and laboratories in the new addition to the Museum build- 

 ing. During the early years of the existence of the Museum, 

 every thing had to be sacrificed to the exigencies of the collec- 

 tions, which accumulated at first far too rapidly for their proper 

 arrangement. Little hj little, however, the collections have 

 been made available ; ^nd in 1876 it became possible to enter 

 upon the definite arrangement planned by the founder of the 

 Museum. This involved the removal of all the objects then on 

 exhibition, and their complete rearrangement. Thanks, how- 

 ever, to the energy and zealous co-operation of the Assistants 

 of the Museum, no less than five rooms have been thrown 

 open to the public, after a period of chaos lasting for over a 

 year, during which plasterers, painters, and carpenters carried 

 on tlieir work, without, however, closing the Museum to visi- 

 tors. The rooms now permanently arranged are : 1st, the 

 synthetic room, containing a synopsis of the animal kingdom 

 (living and fossil) ; 2d, a room devoted to the systematic col- 

 lection of the Radiates, Sponges, and Protozoa ; 3d, the lower 

 floor of a room devoted to the systematic collection of Birds ; 

 4th, the lower floor of the large central room devoted to the 

 systematic collection of Mammalia ; 5th, the galleries of these 

 two connecting rooms containing the systematic collections of 

 Reptiles and Amphibians ; and, lastly, a room containing a 

 Faunal collection of North America, — the Birds and Mammals 

 being on tlie main floor, the Fishes, Reptiles, and Invertebrates in 



