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 ARCHEOLOGY 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- 
Uarly 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 
PALAEOZOIC, 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- 
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