24 
THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
The Deseret Museum. 
T HE Salt Lake Literary and Sci¬ 
entific Association is a body 
corporate, under the laws of 
the Territory of Utah, with 
headquarters at Salt Lake City. The 
association is the proprietor and pro¬ 
moter of the Deseret Museum, a depos¬ 
itory of choice and extensive collections 
in the field of natural history and eth¬ 
nology. Under the auspices of the 
Deseret Museum, the wonderful selenite 
formation in Wayne county, Utah, has 
been worked, and of the magnificent 
crystals thus obtained upward of fif¬ 
teen tons have been gratuitously dis¬ 
tributed to museums and other institu¬ 
tions of learning throughout the United 
States and in Europe. The specified 
purposes of the association are the 
promoting of study in literary and sci¬ 
entific subjects, especially the encour¬ 
agement of the pursuit of natural 
history, including ethnology and the 
formation and preservation of museums 
and libraries. 
For the better carrying out of the 
association’s objects a building has 
been recently erected and equipped in 
Salt Lake City. The structure is of 
pressed brick, with gray sandstone 
trimmings; is 90 feet in length and 67 
feet wide, comprising three floors and 
a basement. A central tower rises on 
the west or front side. This is utilized 
on the top floor for raeterological work. 
Regular courses of evening lectures 
have been conducted during the past 
year and class work has been carried 
on during the day. A limited number 
of students has been admitted to the 
day classes, with • the privileges of the 
laboratories; but the evening lectures 
are open to the public, with proper 
restrictions. 
In the basement is situated an effi¬ 
cient healing and ventilating plant 
toilet rooms, storage rooms for chem¬ 
icals, chemical apparatus, and mineral- 
ogical material, and a commodious 
assay room. The main lecture hall, 
66 by 32 feet, has its principal entrance 
on the first floor, the seats being ter¬ 
raced, to give from all parts a view of 
the demonstration table. This table is 
provided with commodious pneumatic 
trough, gas, electric wires from primary 
and storage battery, and numerous 
other facilities, and for lectures with¬ 
out demonstrations a movable platform 
is placed behind and on a level with 
the table. The wall in front of the 
audience is used in place of a screen 
for stereoptican projections. On the 
first floor are also three smaller lecture 
rooms and an office. 
The second floor is entirely devoted 
to physical science. A small lecture 
room is provided with a demonstration 
table, similar to that in the main room, 
and an extensive series of charts oc¬ 
cupies a frame behind the table. A 
laboratory for general chemistry, 33 
by 32 feet, and another for analytical 
work, 32 by 25 feet, are on this floor. 
The laboratory rooms are excellently 
lighted, and the tables are set diagon¬ 
ally, so that no worker intercepts his 
neighbor’s light. A combustion table 
covered with asbestos mill board and 
provided with blowpipe and blast, an 
anvil and other appliances, are conve¬ 
niently located in each room. 
The apparatus room, contains a main 
case, 25 feet by 9 feet high by 5 feet 
deep: two corner cases, each 9 feet long 
and of height and depth corresponding 
to the other. The apparatus consti¬ 
tutes a particularly full equipment for 
demonstrations in natural philosophy 
and in general and analytical chem- 
