WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN, 
15 
THE MILWAUKEE CITY MUSEUM. 
For more than thirty years past the Natural 
History Society of Wisconsin has been in active 
life, with members in various parts of the State, 
but principally in the city of Milwaukee. Here 
its monthly meetings have for this long period 
been held, and here has been brought together 
by the gifts of its members and its friends a 
museum of natural history in its several depart- 
ments of Mineralogy, Geology, Zoology and 
Botany. This has of late years been known under 
the name of the Englemann Museum, so named 
after a prominent member and valued friend of 
the Society, the late P. Engelmann, Esq., founder 
of the German and English academy. 
It has for long years been located in two large 
rooms in the third story of the German-English 
academy in Broadway, Milwaukee. The position 
is not a central one, nor are the rooms longer 
large enough to contain the ever increasing col- 
lections. This fact was keenly felt by the Society 
and by the many friends of the Museum, who 
last year presented to the State Legislature at 
Madison, an appeal for the necessary funds to 
secure proper and permanent rooms for these 
collections, and to give it a chartered position 
with the name of the Public Museum of the city 
of Milwaukee. This was happily accomplished, 
the Legislature having with much appreciation 
and liberality accorded to the Museum a perma- 
nent endownent amounting to about $6,000 per 
year, to be paid from the city treasury. In con- 
sideration of this endowment the Society pre- 
sented the Museum in full title to the city, to be 
forever held and controlled by a Board of Mu- 
seum Directors. This Board, happily composed 
of active men with a living and intelligent inter- 
est in the cause which they were to represent, last 
spring sent their secretary whom they had 
chosed as permanent curator of the Museum, Mr. 
Carl Doerfiinger, to the East to visit the Smith- 
sonian and other large museums and to report 
upon such features of their arrangement, cases, 
etc., as might to advantage be copied by them in 
in their new enterprise. 
At about this time they were also so fortunate 
as to secure for a term of years three large halls, 
high, spacious, light and airy, with the further 
precious advantage of being practically fire- 
proof, in the splendid Exposition building, which 
is the pride of Milwaukee and the central place 
of congregation of her citizens and of visitors to 
this beautiful city. One of these halls is set 
apart for a lecture-room and locale for the Soci- 
ety’s meetings, while the largest two are now 
being fitted with high, handsome glazed cases, 
to contain and protect while displaying the 
many and valuable collections of the Museum. 
During the late holding, September and October, 
of the yearly Milwaukee Exposition, Prof. Ward 
was accorded the largest of these three rooms 
for the display of a large exhibition of natural 
history specimens which lie took on in several 
car-loads from here. The hall was a noble one, 
about a hundred feet long by forty feet wide 
and twenty feet high, well lighted from win- 
dows by day and by gas and electric lights by 
night. In this hall he, with two of us as assis- 
tants, arranged a large and choice collection of 
minerals, rocks, fossils, casts of fossils, including 
the great Megatherium; geological models of 
relief maps, skeletons,, including a forty-foot 
whale; stuffed specimens, like the skeletons, a 
representation of all the natural orders in each 
of the five classes of vertebrate animals; anthro- 
pological specimens, and finally a large cabinet 
of invertebrate animals, which latter were ar- 
ranged in a side room or annex under the rubric 
of “Neptune’s Garden.” 
This great museum at once became a point of 
central attraction for the entire city as well as 
for the visitors to the Exposition which latter 
opened on the 6th of September and lasted until 
near the end of October. During that period 
our hall was visited by tens of thousands of peo- 
ple from the city, with further visitors from 
throughout Wisconsin. 
The teachers of the Public Schools, for which 
Milwaukee is justly celebrated, took an early and 
a deep interest in the matter, and came in a body 
on several occasions to listen to familiar lectures 
by Prof. Ward, and to note down special facts 
which they subsequently brought to the special 
attention of their pupils in the school class. In 
a short time the contents of the Museum — Me- 
gatherium, Plesiosaurus, Mastodon, Whale, Wal- 
rus, Lion, Tapir, Orang Outan, Gorilla, and all 
the rest, were talked of in every home, where 
they led to many a reference to the encyclope- 
dias, and many a discussion as to forms of ani- 
mal life, our ancestry. Darwin, &c. 
A call soon came through the journals of the 
day, spontaneous and strong, that the great 
museum should remain in Milwaukee and be 
united to the City Museum as a permanent insti- 
tution. A committee composed mainly of gen- 
tlemen connected with the City Museum, took 
up the matter with enthusiasm, and joined to- 
gether in a general canvass of the city for sub- 
scriptions towards the total sum of $15,000 for 
which Prof. Ward had offered them the collec- 
tion. The undertaking, like all similar ones, 
required much time, earnestness, and persistent 
patience in its execution. But these qualities 
brought their ultimate reward, and a sum of 
$12,000 was at last subscribed with which nearly 
all the collection was purchased and transferred 
by Prof, to the committee. These gentlemen in 
their turn made over the collection to the City 
Museum as its permanent property, with the 
single condition that it should be kept perman- 
ently insured by the city for its full value. Thus, 
iu the manner which we have briefly narrated, 
has an addition of greatest value been made to 
the scientific and educational appliances of the 
beautiful Cream City. Milwaukee possesses the 
fairest exhibit of Natural Science material, the 
finest museum display, which exists for many 
hundred miles in any direction. 
The naturalists, teachers and students, both of 
the city and of the whole State will in all the 
future profit by their late acquisition. 
We are proud of the part which our establish- 
ment has taken in this new creation. The col- 
lection was taken to Milwaukee by the Prof, on 
his own promptings and responsibility, depend- 
ing, as he often before has, upon its own merits 
and display to secure its sale. The result has 
justified his confidence in the scientific apprecia- 
tion and the liberality of the citizens of Mil- 
waukee. 
During the display of the Ward collection at 
the Exposition, and before its contents and their 
excellence had become fully known, an opinion 
w T as asked from Prof. Spencer F. Baird, the 
Director of the National Museum at Washington, 
as to Mr. Ward’s work in general, and this pres- 
ent collection in particular. Professor Baird 
promptly returned a reply from which we have 
been kindly allowed by the gentleman to whom 
it was addressed to make the following extract : 
* * * * * 
“We occasionally buy specimens from Profes- 
sor Ward, and are constantly having specimens 
mounted and skeletons prepared at his estab- 
lishment. 
Professor Ward’s specimens are uniformly 
well prepared and preserved, and we have found 
them thoroughly satisfactory. ****** 
His establishment is probably the largest and 
best conducted of the kind in the world, and he 
has done much service to the cause of museum 
education in this country, and by his own efforts 
has greatly raised the standard of excellence in 
the class of objects in which he deals.” 
Spencer F. Baird, 
Director of National Museum. 
One of the many fine pieces which formed part of the Zoological Series in our 
Milwaukee collection, and which now remains to their great museum, is a 
GROUP OF FLAMINGOES. 
This group teaches some important facts in the natural history of the strange bird which forms the 
subject. In the shallow water, near the edge of a tropical lagoon, a female Flamingo has built her 
elevated nest of mud and grass, and in a half standing posture is covering her eggs. This nest is 
modeled according to the description and measurements given by Audubon. At the left of the 
nest a stately male Flamingo on the bank is stepping into the water, while on the right another 
large male bird is stooping down, intently watching a small turtle which can just be discerned at 
the bottom of the water. The accessories— a dwarf palmetto and aquatic plants— are purposely 
few in number, and all has been made subservient to preserving the entire naturalness of the sur- 
roundings. 
The group is in a heavy ornamental case of black walnut nearly six feet square, and each of 
three sides is formed by a single pane of French plate-glass. The whole is very realistic as well as 
artistically executed and pleasant to the eye. 
