MTOM, 
■err 
HJ, 
State Museums of Natural History. 
Atlantic, Iowa, May io .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: We of the Central Western States, 
where there are no large cities, grow weary of 
waiting for things to materialize in the way of 
preserving an adequate record of the natural 
history of the section. There are numerous 
pies an imposing building of its own across 
from the State House. The founder, the late 
Charles Aldrich, received little encouragement 
for many years and worked away without funds 
to gather what material he could to preserve 
intact the history of the commonwealth. Now 
and then someone would present a specimen 
of some rare bird, or interesting creature from 
torical department, and it was removed from 
the cramped quarters of the Capitol basement 
to a home of its own. 
About nine years ago, when Thompson Van 
Hyning was placed in charge of the museum, 
that department first received special attention. 
He had definite ideas of what a museum should 
be, and began to bring order out of the chaos 
PRAIRIE DOGS IN THE IOWA HISTORICAL DEPARTMENT MUSEUM. 
Showing plan of grouping mammals. 
small museums in connection with educational 
institutions that are making the most of the 
means at hand, but we are living in hope that 
some day an institution may arise that will be 
able to gather material for a creditable display 
of the natural resources of our own sections. 
In this respect no doubt Iowa is fairly typical 
of the States in the Middle West. I have been 
interested in the only institution of the kind, 
since its beginning in a small corner of the 
basement of the Capitol. It has been developed 
as a kind of side line in connection with the 
State Historical Department, which now occu- 
some other department of natural history. Thus 
there gradually grew up a miscellaneous collec¬ 
tion of birds, mammals, reptiles, insects and 
various other things, but without any sem¬ 
blance of order. These were crowded into the 
same rooms with the files of newspapers, auto¬ 
graphs of prominent people, old letters and 
similar articles whose only value lay in their 
historical association. 
This condition continued for years. After 
what seemed interminable delays, the Legisla¬ 
ture was at last prevailed upon to make an ap¬ 
propriation for a separate building for the his- 
that had hitherto existed. From the fact that 
the museum has always been last to receive a 
portion of the appropriation and the funds 
have never been sufficient, he has worked under 
most trying conditions. Most of the time he 
has had no assistant, nor has he had sufficient 
funds to properly care for the material within 
reach, to say nothing of securing necessary 
specimens to complete groups of rare species. 
The museum was, and is still a side line with 
the historical department, with little hope of 
being allowed to grow, so long as the main 
show needs the available funds. 
