Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/517

Rh of this vast field; and as the American race is a unit, of which the tribes in our own territory constitute a considerable part, it appears to be our duty to take up this work in a comprehensive way. Thus would be built up not only a National Museum, but an American Museum in the widest sense. This applies not only to anthropology, but to the other great departments of the museum. It will be impossible to carry on such a work without turning over to the Department of Anthropology the entire present building, with all its laboratory and exhibition space.

2. The Department of Biology now occupies a large exhibition space in the Smithsonian building and 55,000 square feet in the museum building. Large collections are stored in laboratories and inclosed spaces in the exhibition halls which would be placed on exhibition if space were available. As has already been explained, in a new building there should be available for the Department of Biology 190,000 square feet of exhibition, laboratory, and storage space.

The present exhibit is more complete than that of the other departments of the museum. Of birds there is a large mounted series, one of the finest in existence, but it is so indifferently housed that it fails to make the impression it should. Of mammals there is a good North American series, and there are some excellent examples of exotic species. There is a good and rather large exhibit of the various groups of the lower forms of animals, including an especially fine series of corals and sponges. These are the only series at present exhibited which can be considered at all comprehensive. Of the great groups of fishes, reptiles, and amphibians there is room only for an outline representation. The wonderful variety of form among insects can be scarcely more than suggested in the space available. Of plants there has hitherto been no exhibit worthy of the name, and the space which it has now been possible to set aside is entirely out of proportion to the vast extent and importance of this great kingdom of Nature.

Every natural-history museum of the first class should have at least two comprehensive exhibition series. The first, the Systematic Series, is a series representing the natural groups, among which all animals and plants, from the highest to the lowest, are divided. The second, the Faunal and Floral Series, is a series showing the animals and plants characteristic of each of the grand divisions of the earth's surface, which naturalists have established as a result of their study of these two kingdoms of Nature. These two great comprehensive exhibits should be supplemented by a number of Special Series, illustrating the "more interesting phenomena and phases of life, such as the macroscopic and microscopic structure of