14 
WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
TULANE UNIVERSITY, 
TULANE UNIVERSITY AND ITS MUSEUM. 
This Institution, grand and comprehensive in its 
aims as in its material appointments, is the just pride 
of the State of Louisiana as well as of the City of New 
Orleans where it is situated. Its noble buildings, in a 
strict repair unfortunately too rarely seen in education- 
al structures at the South, cover nearly an entire block 
between Baronne and Di’yad Streets. There are the 
Academical, Collegiate, Law and Medical Departments 
with all their appurtenances, while at a short distance 
up an adjoining street is a fine manual training School. 
The Tulane University came into existence as such 
by operation of law in July, 1884. In the year 1882 Mr. 
Paul Tulane, of Princeton, N. J., made a donation of 
his real estate in the City of New Orleans to seventeen 
administrators, chosen by himself, for the purpose of 
aiding the higher education of the white youth of Lou- 
isiana. The original donation yielded an income of 
some $85,000 per annum, which has been doubled by 
subsequent gifts from the same benefactor. 
Mr. Tulane, the munificent patron of education in 
this State, was a native of New Jersey, and came in 
1822 to New Orleans, where he was engaged in business 
as a merchant for fifty years. His whole heart and all 
his sympathies were with the city of his adoption, 
where his name stands as the most honored of her citi- 
zens. In 1884, by a contract with the State of Louisi- 
ana, the administrators of the Tulane Educational 
Fund became the administrators of the University of 
Louisiana in perpetuity, agreeing to devote their in- 
come to its development, and to establish thereon the 
Tulane University of Louisiana. . . 
The Medical Department of the University is in the 
fifty-first year of its existence, and has the greatest 
prestige throughout the Southern States, not only for 
the ability and distinction of its professors, but for its 
unsurpassed means of teaching. It has the great Chari- 
ty Hospital with its 700 beds and 6000 patients annually, 
as its school of practical instruction. 
The Law Department was organized in 1847. it has 
numbered among its professors the most distinguished 
lawyers of the State, and, though unendowed, a chair 
in its faculty is esteemed one of the highest honors 
open to the profession in Louisiana. , , 
The State Library, a very valuable collection of about 
26000 volumes, is deposited in the Law building and 
is accessible to the students. 
The Academic Department of the University of Lou- 
isiana opened in the autumn of 1878. It received an 
annuity of $10,000 from the State, and has met with 
excellent success for its limited means. During its ex- 
istence it was enriched by a gift from Mr. Paul Tulane 
of the handsome building formerly known as the Me- 
chanics Institute, but more recently as Tulane Hall. 
It had five professors, namely, of Latin, Greek, French 
and Spanish, and one of mathematics and one of phy- 
sics. The administrators of Tulane University have 
added to the faculty a chair of history and political 
science, filled by the President, and chairs of meta- 
physics, English, chemistry, applied chemistry and 
drawing. 
Col. Wm. Preston Johnston, President of the Louisi- 
ana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical 
College at Baton Rouge, was elected president in 1883, 
and authorized to organize an institution of learning- 
under the terms of Mr. Tulane’s donation. The acquisi- 
tion of the University of Louisiana, with its franchises 
and valuable buildings, gave practical shape to the pur- 
poses of the Tulane Board, and supplied the foundation 
on which to establish a university. It has now thirteen 
chairs in the university proper, besides the High School 
Faculty, with a head master and and five assistant pro- 
fessors and a number of instructors. The physical ap- 
paratus, largely optical and electrical, is the most ex- 
pensive and best selected in the South, and the teach- 
ing is in great part by laboratory work. 
A manual training school has been established, at a 
cost for outfit, exclsive of ground and buildings, of 
$24,000, 
The libraries of the university, besides the State Li- 
brary already mentioned, contain about 10000 volumes, 
and are open to the public, with a certain fund for 
increase of some $2,000 per annum. 
The Museum Hall, in the upper story of Tulane Hall 
is one of the most spacious and finest of its kind on our 
continent. It is a single room about 120 feet long by 
75 feet wide and 30 feet high. Having a truss roof, 
there are no columns to interrupt the view over the 
entire hall. Upon either side are high narrow windows 
extending from the floor nearly to the ceiling. The 
walls are finely finished with white pillasters while the 
ceiling above is richly adorned with very deep panels. 
In short the room is palatial in its lordly ornamenta- 
tion. 
On either side is a gallery with a light railing along 
its edge which protects without obstructing the view. 
Along the wall in the gallery are handsome glazed cases 
with shelves disposed in steps. In the same way there 
are below the gallery cases standing as alcoves between 
each pair of windows, thin shelves being also arranged 
in steps disposed back to back on either side of the 
room. 
It was our pleasant work to dispose these cases and 
then to arrange in them a large series of Collections or 
Cabinets which had been a part of our still larger Ex- 
hibit at the World’s Exposition of 1884-5 at New Or- 
leans. 
These Collections were, very briefly, as follows : A 
large Mineral Cabinet containing over 2000 specimens 
of choice, clean, fresh, beautifully crystallized minerals 
of many hundred species and varieties. These are care- 
fully classified, and each specimen is mounted upon a 
black- walnut block, with a printed label. Interspersed 
in the classification is a series of artificial crystals, il- 
lustrating this important part of the subject,— crystal- 
lography. 
This Mineral Cabinet occupies the entire right-hand 
gallery. The opposite gallery is filled with the Pale- 
ontological Cabinet. Here is exhibited a complete 
series of the fossils of the different geological forma- 
tions of our own and of other countries. The classi- 
fication commences with the oldest Geological Period 
and passes along through the whole series to the de- 
posits of the present day, thus giving, with orderly 
sequence, the whole history of life upon our globe 
throughout all Geological time. The specimens are 
both actual fossils and casts of unique specimens_from 
the Royal Museums of Europe. Some of the larger of 
these specimens are placed on a large platform with a 
railing- around it in the front end of the hall floor 
below. Such are the Glyptodon, Mastodon, Icthyos- 
aurus, Plesiosaurus, and other great “monsters vast of 
ages past.” Another platform of like size stands fur- 
ther down the hall and on it are displayed some cf the 
larger forms of modern life. There are led by the skele- 
ton of an adult Indian Elephant, and there follow fine 
stuffed specimens of the Moose, Elk, Bison, Walrus, 
Camel, and Rhinoceros. In a great glazed case still fur- 
ther back is a group of Bornean OrangOutans mounted 
with natural attitude and surroundings in the tree- 
tops. Another fine group of the Orhithorhynchus 
from Australia completes the Cabinet oe Verte- 
brate Zoology. In the ten Alcove Cases below the 
gallery on the right hand is the Cabinet of Inverte- 
brates. Here are arrang-ed long series of beautiful 
Sponges, Gorg-onias, Corals, Shells and Crustaceans 
represented by several thousand specimens from all 
parts of the globe. Another smaller case standing cen- 
trally in the room is devoted to an Anthropological 
Cabinet. Here are series of copies of skulls of the vari- 
ous races of mankind, with casts of Brains of a chosen 
comparative series, and Busts of Anthopoid Apes. 
Finally along the walls of the hall, both in the gal- 
leries and below are displayed several score of Geolo- 
gical and Zoological Charts and Pictures all help- 
ing to adorn the room and to add their teaching and 
illustration to that of the specimens themselves. 
This whole great Cabinet we supplied to Tulane Mu- 
seum for the really moderate sum of ten thousand 
dollars. 
TAXIDERMAL CUTS. 
Readers of the Bulletin will doubtless remember 
the “ take off ” on taxidermy that appeared in the Bul- 
letin some time ago. This consisted of a series of 
eleven cuts (occupying just two pages), depicting the 
various trials and tribulations of a taxidermist work- 
ing upon an original theory, unappreciated by -his cus- 
tomers. These cuts met with so hearty a reception that 
we have reproduced them. The series occupies two 
sheets, eleven by fourteen inches. We offer them at 
25 cents for cardboard set ; 15 cents on paper. 
Below is given one, the stuffing of a grey-hound, to 
serve as a reminder : 
