8 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



mineral collection is now of necessity abandoned as an exhibit. It, 

 with other important collections, must remain in storage until 

 such time as new quarters will afford suitable facilities for display. 



The distribution of the scientific collections at the present time 

 may be briefly summarized as follows: 



A Geological Hall. Here are the offices of the State Botanist 

 with the herbarium, of the State Entomologist with the collections 

 of insects, of the Assistant State Geologist, the Mineralogist and 

 the' Zoologist. These office quarters have unavoidably displaced 

 a very considerable part of the collections, as the first two officials 

 named were formerly located in the Capitol and the other offices 

 were on the first floor and in the basement so far as they existed 

 at all. There is an exhibition of zoologic material occupying 

 the fourth or top floor, of rocks and fossils filling such part of the 

 third floor as is not occupied for offices and all the second floor, an 

 exhibit chiefly of industrial geology in the old lecture room. Until 

 within a few weeks past we occupied in this building 22,000 square 

 feet of floor space, absurdly inadequate for both offices and the 

 exhibit of collections. This area is today lessened by a very 

 large fraction. In the basement and cellar are stored in boxes all 

 the collections which have won grand prizes and gold medals at the 

 recent expositions at Buffalo and St Louis; also the entire collection 

 of minerals. 



B State Hall, The offices of the Director, Geologist and Paleon- 

 tologist and his staff are in this building, which also contains the 

 most valuable part of the large paleontologic collections of the 

 Museum. These are stored in several thousand drawers and 

 boxes. In the basement is the extensive rock-cutting plant and 

 machine shop. Within the past three years three of these offices 

 have been surrendered to the Corporation Tax Bureau and one 

 basement room to the State Engineer. 



C Capitol, The corridors on the fourth floor at the western 

 end and the landing of the western stairway contain a series of 

 cases filled with such part of the archeologic collections as can 

 now be displayed. Additional specimens pertaining to this col- 

 lection, are^displayed in the State Library and many others are 

 packed away for future exhibition. 



D Storage house (McCredie malthouse). In this building we 

 have stored many hundreds of boxes and cases of scientific speci- 

 mens of various kinds some of which have not been opened in a 

 half century, others containing "the materials recently acquired 

 which after beingj'studied have had to be put away. 



