Museum of Natural History 



To the members of the City Library Association the Curator respect- 

 fully presents the twenty-second annual report of the Museum of 

 Natural History: — 



Attendance and Lectures 



During the two hundred and eight hours that the museum was 

 open to the pubHc on Sunday afternoons the past year, six thousand 

 and thirty nine persons inspected its collections. The smallest 

 number of visitors came during the summer months and the great- 

 est number in the winter. On four successive Sundays of February 

 and March there was a total of twelve hundred and forty-four 

 people in sixteen hours, or approximately eighty persons per hour. 

 When the season offers but few attractions out of doors, the mu- 

 seum is especially appreciated, its regular exhibits are enjoyed, and 

 there results an unusually studious inspection of special exhibits. 

 To take advantage of this attitude, informal Sunday afternoon 

 talks were given during the first three months of 1916 on practical 

 subjects such as wheat, corn, cotton, flax, jute, and hemp. Tables 

 of attractive specimens were placed in the main exhibition room 

 and the speaker for the afternoon took advantage of the opportu- 

 nity to interest all who stopped to look. The bread maker who 

 had, perhaps, only known wheat as flour in a bag, saw the plant, 

 and pictures of fields of growing wheat, and was told of graham, 

 entire wheat, and white flours, and of their relative nutritive 

 values. Principles of bread making were also explained. Men 

 who handle ropes in their daily work saw hemp, jute, and cotton 

 plants, and their fibers in different stages of preparation. Processes 

 of manufacturing ropes and other commonly used articles of fiber 

 were demonstrated, and pictures were shown of crude and per- 

 fected machinery for simplifying such processes. The story of the 

 source of our fuel coal from plants was new to many. There were 

 boys and girls as well as men and women who listened and learned, 

 and with few exceptions these visitors were people who do not 

 usually attend lectures. For this reason the development of such 

 lecture courses, tried the past season as an experiment, will be care- 

 fully planned for the future. 



