THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.By Warren Taylor.

By Warren Taylor.

The completion of the new building of the American Museum of Natural History marks the second step toward the realization of one of the most colossal schemes ever formed for the promotion of science. The plan will not be fully carried out until the whole of Manhattan Square, on a part of which the present edifice stands, is covered with a structure of imposing extent and immense capacity, which is to become the great headquarters of natural science on this continent, and to rank on at least an equality with any similar institution in the world.

Natural history is a department of knowledge that should be of especial interest to the inhabitants of a country where nature displays her wonders on so tremendous a scale and her riches in such exhaustless variety. And indeed America’s contributions to that branch of science have already been great. Of this the names of Alexander Wilson, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, James E. DeKay, James Dwight Dana, and others no less noteworthy, will serve as sufficient evidence.

Scientific societies were among the earliest developments of American intellectual life, and in our leading cities they have received a constant and growing support. Oldest of all is the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, which issued scientific works as long ago as 1769. In 1780 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was organized in Boston, and in 1812 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science began its useful existence. New York was later in entering the field. The Lyceum of Natural History, the germ of the present establishment, was originated in 1817. In 1869 its collections were destroyed by fire, but the disaster proved to be the beginning of its expansion. Some prominent and public spirited members of the society, realizing the importance of securing for it safer and more extended quarters, took steps to establish it upon a broader basis as one of the recognized institutions of the metropolis. The American Museum of Natural History was incorporated by the Legislature, and an ample and well situated plot of ground, covering four entire city blocks, was assigned to its use by the municipal park department, which has also paid for the erection and maintenance of the museum building.

Of the immense structure designed by the incorporators of the museum, an interior wing, about one twentieth part of the whole mass, was the first erected. The corner stone was laid by President Grant in June, 1874, and the building was opened in December, 1877. Its external appearance is by no means unattractive, although in its design architectural beauty was subordinated to practical considerations of light and arrangement. Its collections are displayed in three great halls, one of which has its floor space almost doubled by a capacious balcony. Above these is an attic story, containing the library of the institution and a number of chambers set apart as lecture rooms, laboratories, and the like.

THE NEW BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

The board walk that runs diagonally from Seventy Seventh Street and Central Park to Eighty First Street and Columbus Avenue—the two points at which visitors usually approach the museum—passes, midway, the present entrance, whoseunpretentious aspect is a most decided contrast to the solid magnificence of the newly finished front. It leads directly to the first great hall, on the ground floor, which is mainly occupied by the Jesup collection of American woods. This is an assemblage of specimens of trees indigenous to North America, wonderfully complete and well arranged. Each is cut so as to display the bark and the polished and unpolished timber, with a colored map that shows at a glance the geographical distribution of the species. In most instances an entire section of the trunk is exhibited, and on the west side of the hall there are two colossal specimens, worthy to serve as round tables for King Arthur, which may prompt the unobservant visitor to exclaim, “Those must be the Big Trees of California!” Such is not the case, though both of them hail from the Pacific coast, being respectively the Yellow and the Sugar Pine. A specimen of theSequoia giganteais in an adjoining case, where it attracts less attention because it is but a comparatively small fragment of the trunk of one of those famous monarchs of the vegetable kingdom.

In the same hall, in cases that stand along the center of the room and in the window alcoves, are some bird groups that receive a plentiful share of admiration. They deserve it, for as specimens of accurate and artistic taxidermy they have rarely been equaled and never excelled. They reproduce feathered life and its surroundings with a fidelity that bespeaks thorough knowledge, remarkable skill, and almost infinite patience. There are birds in every attitude—perching, swimming, walking, and even flying—each in a setting that very picturesquely shows its habitation and habits. The uninitiated visitor can hardly persuade himself that the foliage, the herbage, and the flowers that he sees through the glass can be the imperishable product of an artificer’s ingenuity, and not the work of nature herself. Some of the best of the groups are the robins, with their nest among the pink blossomed apple boughs; the grebes, swimming in a happy family upon a glassy imitation of water; the laughing gullswith their nest in the bent grass; the Louisiana water thrush, domiciled under an overhanging bank; the cat birds, the clapper rails, and the ruffed grouse, these last so life-like that the visitor can almost fancy he hears the brown leaves rustle beneath the feet of the chickens. Great credit is due to Jenness Richardson, the museum’s chief taxidermist, and Mrs. E. S. Mogridge, who jointly prepared this beautiful series of exhibits.

THE BELLA BELLA INDIAN WAR CANOE.

A specimen that calls for a word of notice, as one of the most valuable in the museum, stands on the right hand side of the entrance to this lower hall. It is an awkward looking bird of medium size, dark plumage, and disproportionately large bill, and its label designates it as the Great Auk. It is, in fact, one of the very few extant relics of a species that has within the memory of living man disappeared from the earth. There are but three others in this country—one in the National Museum at Washington, one in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and one in the collection belonging to Vassar College. The money value of a specimen of such rarity is hard to fix precisely, but it undoubtedly runs into the thousands of dollars.

A DETHRONED IDOL.

The second floor—the main story of the building—is principally devoted to cases of stuffed birds. These multitudinous rows of single specimens, each perched upon its neat stand of cherry wood, are, of course, less picturesque than the grouped figures, but are nevertheless of great interest and value. The martial aspect of the eagles, the curious structure of the pelicans and secretary birds, and the bright plumage of the flamingoes, the peacocks, and the argus pheasant attract attention and admiration.

Here, too, are the osseous remains of the late lamented Jumbo, to whom has fallen the rare privilege of achieving a double immortality; for while his pachydermatous hide, stuffed with straw, is still a feature of the “Greatest Show on Earth,” his skeleton stands majestically on the visitor’s right hand as he enters the second hall of the museum. Sea lions, walruses and other marine monsters are also to be found on this floor, besides a few stuffed groups. One of these last shows a family of screech owls, with their nest deep in a hollow tree. Another—oneof the best in the museum—represents a scene in the tree tops of Borneo, and includes five fine specimens of the orang-utan, or Wild Man of the Woods, the great simian that disputes with the African chimpanzee and gorilla, the honor of being the brute’s nearest approach to man. Playing among the branches and eating the fruit of the durian, we see here a group that shows the orang-utan (we follow the spelling adopted by the museum) at various periods of its life and growth. There are a baby, a young female, a full grown male, and two veterans—one of either sex—with long, black hair and hideously wrinkled faces.

Ascending to the gallery above, we find a large and varied collection of implements of savage tribes and relics of prehistoric man. A huge case of skulls, whose owners lived and breathed thousands of years ago, is a ghastly reminder of the continuity of human history. Implements of stone and flint from France, from Denmark, and from the Mississippi valley are silent witnesses of the days before the discovery of the art of working iron. There are also a couple of notable groups—one of opossums and one of muskrats. The latter is a singularly faithful reproduction of nature. It shows a muskrat swimming by the bank of a pond, whose glassy surface is blurred by the ripples that mark his course. White and yellow lilies float on the water, from which rises a muskrat house, opened at the side to show one of its inmates lunching upon a reed stem. The sandy bank of the pond is pierced by galleries from which there peeps a young rat.

From the ceiling, in the center of the hall, there hangs a huge Indian war canoe, which once bore the warriors of the Bella Bella tribe, in British Columbia, over the waters of Queen Charlotte’s Sound. Though capacious enough to carry a small regiment, it was made from the wood of a single tree.

THE MASTODON—AN EXTINCT INHABITANT OF NORTH AMERICA.

The third floor of the museum is devoted to collections of shells and minerals, which include a wealth of interesting specimens. There is a sheet of itacolumite, or flexible sandstone, from North Carolina, so arranged that its power of bending can be tested by turning a screw;there are stibnite (antimony ore) from Japan, galenite (lead ore) from Missouri, gold quartz from California, calamine from New Jersey, as well as chalcopyrite, marcasite, and a host of other minerals of strange name and form. On one small tray are grouped reproductions of the world’s most famous diamonds, showing the exact size and appearance of these little pebbles for which dynasties have been overthrown. One of them is labeled “the Koh-i-noor, value $1,000,000.” It is safe to say that Queen Victoria is not offering the original for sale at that price. And if the Koh-i-noor, which weighs 125 karats, is worth a million, what must be the value of the Great Mogul diamond, of 297 karats?

Further down the same row of cases are amethysts, beryls, agates, and other semi-precious stones. Among these is a curious section of an agatized tree from Chalcedony Park, Arizona. It was mineralized by the waters of a hot silicated spring, the silica replacing the wood as it decayed, particle by particle.

In the center of the hall stands a remarkably perfect skeleton of a mastodon, the huge prehistoric elephant that once roamed over Europe and North America. This specimen was found in a peaty swamp near Newburgh, New York, in 1879. Compared with the bony framework of Jumbo on the floor below—the two monsters were separated, perhaps, in order to prevent jealousy between them—the mastodon is shorter in stature, but considerably longer. He stands 8 feet 5 inches from the ground, while his length “over all” is 18 feet, and his immense curved tusks measure 7 feet 5 inches. Near the entrance there is the skeleton of a moa, the great extinct ostrich of New Zealand, and at the further end of the hall that of another animal that existed in the dawn of man’s history—the great Irish elk, found in a peat bog near Limerick.

The raised map of New Hampshire, which stands in an alcove on the left hand side of the entrance, is the product of an immensity of care and labor. It is constructed to a scale of a mile to the inch, the elevation being exaggerated about five times, or to a scale of a thousand feet to the inch. It is a good illustration of the value of this sort of map in giving a graphic and comprehensive idea of the topographical and geological formation of a country.

A SCREECH OWL FAMILY.

On the wall on the other end of the hall are two large tablets of triassic rock from Massachusetts, showing the foot prints—or “au-toe-graphs,” as James Russell Lowell once ventured to call them—of some huge reptile, and of tiny insects and shellfish.

Throughout his inspection of the museum’s contents, the visitor will have noticed that every inch of available space has been occupied, and that the exhibits are in some cases cramped for lack of room. The opening of the new building will effectually remedy this, and provide ample accommodations for the collectionsand their probable augmentation for some time to come. Its halls are now being fitted up with cases. Its appearance is imposing, and not devoid of a solid and substantial style of architectural beauty. Its general character is Romanesque. The front, which faces Seventy Seventh Street, is of a rough, light reddish stone, with a lofty and rather heavy looking roof of red tiles. It is approached by two wide flights of stone steps, connected with a spacious arched portico by a bridge that passes over a basement entrance below—a very convenient and symmetrical arrangement. Like the older building, the newly finished structure has unusually ample window light, and is altogether well adapted to the purpose for which it is designed.

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