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Cornell University Library 1994.THE STATE MUSEUM AND STATE
PROGRESS
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN, LL.D
President of the American Museum of Natural History
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OP THE
NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION BUILDING,
OCTOBER is, 1912PROF. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORNTHE STATE MUSEUM AND STATE PROGRESSTHE STATE MUSEUM AND STATE PROGRESS
BY HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN
It has been the good fortune of the people of this Commonwealth to have
elected those men to preside over its interests who were positively instru-
mental in promoting science and learning, and who were especially active in
promoting agriculture, and the branches allied thereto. Your own recom-
mendations and influence, touching these great interests, are highly appre-
ciated by the people, as is evident from their united movements in establishing
institutions which are designed to bear directly upon those objects, and which
are specially designed to place them upon a scientific basis. (Ebenezer
Emmons to His Excellency Hamilton Fish, Governor, Albany, December
25, 1851.)1
The citizens of New York and their representatives in the
Legislature are those especially addressed on this historic occa-
sion rather than the distinguished company of scientific men
gathered here for this celebration. While the present is a crit-
ical period in the moral and economic welfare of our people, we
predict that the twentieth century, which is still in its youth, is
destined to reach its maturity with a far more general distribu-
tion of human happiness than we witness at the close of the
nineteenth century. The unequal distribution of the good things
of life is the underlying cause of all present social agitation, and
by the good things of life we do not mean riches, but family,
health, food, sunshine, pure air, labor, the beauty of nature, the
creative works of man. A redistribution will come about, not
through politics which seems to produce little except rivalry and
bad feeling, nor through socialism which is essentially unnatural,
but through the application to human welfare of all of nature’s
resources, known and still to be discovered. These resources
administer to our spiritual, intellectual and moral as well as to
our bodily welfare. The great pathway to state progress is
knowledge, obedience and unselfish utilization of the happiness
which nature puts in our hands.
Our theme today is the part which the museum has exerted
and is destined to exert toward this millennium of the twentieth
century.
The rise of the museum as a new force in town, city, state and
nation is the latest phase of educational evolution. The school,
the college, the university, and the library have gone in advance;
the museum follows and is winning its own place and influence
because it supplies a demand which none of its sister institutions
1 Natural History of New York, Part V. Agriculture. New York, Bos-
ton, Albany, 1851.	r*i4
fills. The very fact of this independent development is a proof
that the museum is not one of the luxuries of civilization but an
essential and vital force in the enlightenment of the people.
Every community, small or large, needs its museum as it needs
its schools and its churches. This rise, which is especially re-
markable in certain cities of Germany and Austria, throughout
England, and above all in the United States during the past quar-
ter century, is largely due to what may be called the new museum
idea, namely, that the museum is not a conservative but a pro-
, gressive educational force, that it has a teaching quality or value
peculiar to itself, that the museum succeeds if it teaches, fails
partially if it merely amuses or interests people and fails entirely
if it simply mystifies. The old museum idea was that of a sanc-
tuary or refuge, a safe deposit vault for curious, rare, or beautiful
objects which might be lost or destroyed; the ignorant visitor
was tolerated rather than attracted, the curator was a keeper, not
a teacher. The new spirit within the natural history museum is
the educational spirit, and this is animated by what may be called
its ethical sense, its sense of public duty, its realization that the
general welfare of the people is the prime reason for its existence,
that exploration, research, exhibition and publication should all
contribute to this, that to serve a community the museum must
reach out to all parts of nature and must master what nature has
to show and to teach. The museum will flurish if the high edu-
cational service of the state is inscribed over its portal and in-
stilled in the minds of every member of the staff from the highest
to the lowest.
What renders this celebration a great one is that the ideal just
sketched is largely exemplified in the New York State Museum,
in the historic fact that the noble men of science and the wise
rulers of our State have long been leaders in one of the great
principles of museum development, namely, that the foundation
of a state museum is mastery of the natural history of the state
itself. In this regard since 1836 New York has been holding the
torch for all the other states of the Union. There has already
evolved here that intimate union between a natural history sur-
vey, pure scientific research, a museum and the public welfare
which the most enlightened communities in the civilized world
have either attained or are striving to attain.
There remains to be developed by the Education Department
through the museum the great work of spreading the beneficents
products of this union throughout the public educational institu-
tions of the State, a work with which the honored name of
Albert S. Bickmore will always be associated as pioneer and
founder.1 This celebration is auspicious because it prepares the way
anew for this educational function of connecting the museum with
the schools. This commodious building renders it possible for the
first time in the history of the institution to expand along all the
other lines of the new museum spirit, and directly and by exten-
sion touch the entire educational system of the State.
Thus we celebrate not the birth but the opportunity for re-
newed growth of an institution of which all the citizens of the
State may well be proud. Like the nautilus, the museum moves
into a new and beautiful chamber with its fine heritage, its ideals
and its purposes unchanged: the shell is not the vital part, but
it is highly favorable to the prolonged and expanding existence
of the organism within.
In looking for the causes of the origin of this institution we
find they are threefold: first, the natural grandeur and interest
of the territory of the State itself as a source of scientific inquiry
and inspiration; second, the assemblage of an unusual number
of scientific observers of the first order whom New York found
among her own sons or attracted to her borders ; third, a wise
and liberal exercise of the powers of government on the part of
the rulers of the State. It follows that our chief concern today
should also be threefold, namely, the preservation of this natural
beauty as a continual source of inspiration and happiness to pos-
terity, the birth and training of men and women capable and
worthy of observing the laws of nature and spreading knowledge
of them, the maintenance of standards of government equal to
those of Secretary Dix who first outlined the survey, and of Gov-
ernors Marcy, Seward, Bouck and Fish who promoted it.
As illustrative of the close union between science and good
government two ancient episodes in the State’s history may be
recalled. One is that Samuel Latham Mitchell, the pioneer of
natural science in this State, delivered an evening address before
the State Legislature, was elected to a seat in the Legislature of
1 The law providing for courses of free lectures to the teachers and
pupils of the common schools of the State was passed in April or May
1884. The first lecture under this grant from the State was given by Pro-
fessor Albert' S. Bickmore of the American Museum on October 18, 1884.
The last lecture under State grant was given on March . 12, 1904. The
work has since been carried on directly by the Department of Education.6
1790, and in 1807 took the first steam-propelled voyage up the
Hudson with Fulton. Another is that in 1818, on invitation of
Governor Clinton, Amos Eaton, the pioneer geologist of the
State, delivered a course of lectures before the Legislature. He
inspired Governor Clinton to actual field work in geology and the
State Museum now possesses a collection of minerals and fossils
made by him in the vacant hours of his gubernatorial duties. He
interested many of the leading men of the State in geology and
its application to agriculture by means of surveys, thus planting
the idea which eventuated in the great work, “ Natural History
of New York.”
Is New York State today seeking among her votaries of science
some of her representatives at Albany to counsel her in matters
of State welfare? We may not answer the question but may
put another:	Is the vast free educational system of the State,
on which eighty millions of dollars are being expended annually,
with a total attendance of one and one-half million pupils, turn-
ing out its due proportion of men of science for the future service
of the State? Whatever the answers to these questions, it is cer-
tainly well even on a jubilee occasion such as this for the mem-
bers of a great democratic commonwealth like ours, full of con-
fidence and pride in its institutions, dazzled perhaps by stupen-
dous expenditures and vast numbers of students, to pause and
consider which direction our social evolution is taking through
education and democracy — progressive or retrogressive.
As regards the birth and education of men of science, the honor
roll of geology in this State, the product of old educational
methods, is a long one. We are impressed with what the State,
the nation and more than this, the world owes to the generation
born between 1764 and i860 within our own State borders.
Among the pioneers of science in this country were the follow-
ing:	Samuel Latham Mitchell (1764-1831), born in Hempstead,
L. I., whose political services have been alluded to above and who
published in 1796 “A Report of the Geology and Mineralogy
of the Hudson,” the first work of its kind in the United States;
Stephen van Rensselaer (1765-1839), born in New York City,
founder of the Polytechnic of Troy, patron of the first serious
geological work in the State; David Hosack (1769-1835), born
in New York City, closely associated with De Witt Clinton in
the leadership of civic life, promoter of botany and mineralogy,
master of John Torrey; Amos Eaton (1776-1842), born at Chat-
ham, turned toward science by Mitchell and Hosack, whose7
survey of Albany and Rensselaer counties marked an era in the
progress of geology in this country, the master of James Hall;
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), born in Albany county,
pioneer explorer of the geology and the mineral wealth beyond
the Alleghenies and discoverer of the source of the Mississippi;
John Torrey (1796-1873), born in New York City, pupil of Ho-
> sack, founder of American botany, master of Asa Gray; Joseph
Henry (1799-1878), born in Albany, discoverer of the magneto-
electric telegraph, which has put the whole world into communi-
cation; William Williams Mather (1804-59), born in Brooklyn,
one of the four geologists of the Survey, pioneer geologist
of Ohio and Kentucky; James Dwight Dana (1813-95), born in
Utica, geologist of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, the fore-
most geologist of his time in America; Alexander Winchell
(1824-91), born in the Northeast, geologist of Michigan; Othniel
Charles Marsh (1831-99), born in Lockport, famous vertebrate
paleontologist, one of the leaders in the exploration of the west-
ern states; Robert Parr Whitfield (1828-1910), born in New
Hartford, invertebrate paleontologist of distinction; Edward
Orton (1829-99), born in Delaware county, state geologist of
Ohio; John Wesley Powell (1824-1902), born in Mount Morris,
explorer of the Grand Canon, famous ethnologist, director of the
United States Geological Survey; Israel Cook Russell (1852-
1906), born at Garrettsville, geologist, explorer and eminent
writer.
We trust space may be found within the new museum, in bust
or tablet, to memorialize the services of these great men as well
as of those who, like Hall, came from other states. In this mat-
ter the State may well follow France, which leads the world in
appreciation of its men of science and erects more statues to its
savants and literateurs than to its military leaders.
Among the living natives of the State who have rendered or
are rendering distinguished service are Raphael Pumpelly (1837),
geologist and explorer; John James Stevenson (1841), geologist
of the Wheeler and Pennsylvania Surveys; Grove Karl Gilbert
(1843), geologist of two state and two of the national surveys;
Charles Doolittle Walcott (1853), leading invertebrate paleon-
tologist and administrator of the United States Geological Survey
and of the Smithsonian Institution; last but not least, John Mason
Clarke (1857), pupils of James Hall, invertebrate paleontologist,
distinguished in geology and paleontology.8
From this number the nation has chosen two of the directors
of the United States Geological Survey, Powell and Walcott, and
two of the secretaries of the Smithsonian Institution, Henry and
Walcott.
Our early political governors and men of science found their
inspiration in the State itself, in its splendid area equal to that
of all New England, in its scenery — including the Palisades, the
Hudson, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the Mohawk, Niagara,
the lake and great western plains district — and in its diversity
second only to that of California. Beautiful as the surface is
with its flora and fauna, its interest, significance and utility have
been vastly enhanced for man by the thorough understanding of
its natural history and its prehistory, from the birth of the Adi-
rondacks and Highlands to the final sculpturing of the State by
the glaciers, with all the grand procession of life from the time
of the interior Paleozoic seas to the plants and animals of our day.
For all this deeper knowledge we are indebted to the Natural His-
tory Survey of the State, begun in 1836 and practically continuing
to the present time.
The survey,1 as established 76 years ago, was by far the most
important scientific event in the history of our State and one of
the most important in the history of the nation.2 It attracted five
of the most able geologists and naturalists of the country to its
service, Lardner Vanuxem (1792-1848) from Pennsylvania, Eben-
ezer Emmons (1799-1843) from Massachusetts, from our State
Mather, the geologist, and Torrey, the botanist, and James Hall
(1811-98) from Massachusetts. The survey set a new and high
standard not only for the State but for the country; it exemplified
the ideal development, side by side, of pure and applied science.
Emmons observed:
The survey of New York was indebted for its projection and execution
to a movement in science — a movement which pervaded the entire thinking
community. It was one of those natural results which mark the progress of
truth; and itself was an evidence of the progressive intelligence of the
human mind.
1lt was the essay of John A. Dix as Secretary of State (1835) on the
Natural Resources of the State that was the efficient final act before legisla-
tion was effected, a report prepared at the request of the Legislature with
reference to the organization of the Natural History Survey.
2 See Merrill’s “ Contributions to the History of American Geology/’ p. 344.9
Hall observed:
The enlightened spirit in which this survey was directed, and the munifi-
cence with which it has been sustained, have afforded every means required
for its completion. The State of New York, which has hitherto established
her claim to the dignity of the Empire State, has now added another wreath
to her laurels, in becoming the first in the patronage of science, and in the
benefits thereby bestowed on her citizens, as she is first in resources, in
commerce and public improvements.1 2 * * *
Mather observed:
The State of New York is the first that fully carried out the principle of
division of labor in the execution of a survey on the natural history of the
State, under the name of a geological survey. By this arrangement each
head of a department of the survey has been enabled to devote his whole
time and attention to his own specific duties, without having the entire range
of natural science to distract his attention. .	.	. The survey of New
York, unlike that of some of the other states, has been uninfluenced by
party and political considerations, and the chief magistrates, during its
execution, have been actuated by high and ennobling motives.*
Merrill observed:
This led to an organization which has left a more lasting impression upon
American geology than any that has followed or had preceded it. As fate
ordained, the locality was one of the most favorable that could have been
selected for working out the fundamental principles of stratigraphic geology;
moreover, those appointed to do the work proved equal to the occasion. The
New York survey gave to American geology a nomenclature largely its own;
it demonstrated above everything else the value of fossils for purposes of
correlation, and incidentally it brought into prominence one man, James Hall,
who was destined to become America’s greatest paleontologist.8
What was discovered by the original survey, between 1836 and
1842, fills thirty great volumes, stately and beautiful in form,
epoch-making in content. The data in these works and the new
series of thirteen “ Memoirs of the State Museum,” published be-
tween 1889 and 1910, are the units out of which, together with
our present knowledge, the wonderful geologic history of the
State with all its natural mineral wealth and other resources, its
botany and zoology, can be written.
An outline of this history may serve the practical man as a
brilliant instance of the union between pure and applied science,,
1Hall, James, “Natural History of New York,” Part IV, New York,
Boston, Albany, 1843, p. ix.
2Mather, William M., “Natural History of New York,” Part IV, New
York, Boston, Albany, 1843, p. x.
9 Merrill, George P., “ Contributions to the History of American Geology.”
Rep’t U. S. National Mus. for 1904, p. 189-734 (p. 344) ‘IO
between theory and practice, but more than this it may show the
lover of nature the new fascination and glamor which a knowl-
edge of the past lends to the present.
Geology has shown that there are in New York State two
great mountain uplifts or granitic sentinels surviving from the
very beginning which are still centers of greatest beauty: to the
north, as an outpost of the Canadian nucleus of the North Amer-
ican continent, lies the rugged mass of the Adirondacks, to be
imagined as an island of ancient crystalline rocks, which has
been above the ocean since the geologic dawn except at the close
of Ordovician time, its ancient mountains now worn down to
their roots by erosion in succeeding ages and still flanked around
the base by the old shore formations of the Cambrian and later
periods. To the south lie the equally ancient Hudson highlands
and the rugged ridges of Westchester county, stretching south-
westward from New England, the vestige of an eastern land mass
of early geologic times which is now in large part sunk beneath
the waters of the ocean or covered by more recent formations, the
debris of struggles with the encroaching Atlantic. In this old
pre-Cambrian continent, whose crystalline schists have been the
special study of Kemp and Cushing, are found our building
granites, our magnetic iron, our rich deposits of talc and garnet,
sources of industry, and welfare.
There were also two historic seas: the interior sea, or Ameri-
can Mediterranean, which bounded these granitic sentinels on
the west, and the ancient Atlantic, which bounded them on the
east. Our Atlantic coast line during the Paleozoic period
stretched far to the east, perhaps as far as the continental shelf,
one hundred miles east of Long Island, where the depth then, as
now, rapidly increased to the abyssal ocean.
There were also two great inclines or drainage systems, the
first to the westward emptied into the interior sea which stretched
from the south and west over a large part of the continent.
During these early epochs central and western New York was
our western coast line and formed a battle ground between this
inland sea and the granitic lands to the north and east; the shore
lines advanced and receded, spreading the gravel beds and sands
or the silt and calcareous ooze of the deeper waters in alternating
succession over the broad plains of central and western New
York. To the receptive basins of these shore lines of Silurian and
Devonian age our builders largely owe their sandstones andTHE MAIN MUSEUM ROOMSII
limestones, their limes and cements. To the animal life embedded
in Silurian and Devonian times we owe in large measure our
natural gas and our petroleum. Of Silurian age are our hematite
iron ores. Great coastal evaporating basins of Silurian times have
bequeathed to us our gypsum and our salt.
In the prolonged struggle the forces of uplift were finally vic-
torious ; the interior sea retreated step by step to the south and
west until in the era of the great coal forest of Carboniferous
times, the border line of permanent land has passed beyond the
limits of what is now the State of New York. This is the reason
the State has no coal. Throughout the central and western
portion the rock formations still lie relatively flat and undis-
turbed; from the line of the Mohawk valley and the southern
shore of Lake Ontario the successive strata rise tier above tier
until they culminate in the Catskills to the east and the Pennsyl-
vania border.
In 1837 James Hall, after a year under Emmons in the second
district, was assigned this level and supposedly uninterest-
ing portion of the State, the fourth district, which he was told
“ was good enough for a young man of twenty-five.” The region
was regarded as of little promise and was willingly relinquished
to him, and this proved to be one of the happy accidents of
geology, for Hall's genius revealed the fact that nowhere in the
world does there exist so complete a series of the older fossillif-
erous rocks, such- continuous records of the life of the ancient
inland sea; in wonderful perfection the animals that lived in the
shallow waters and along our inland coast have yielded the data
for the paleontologic researches of the master and his pupils —
Whitfield, Beecher, Clarke, and others.
The second great drainage system, now represented by the
vestigial Hudson river, is that which flowed from northwest to
southeast between the northern and southern granitic masses of
the Adirondacks and the Hudson. This broad trough, or valley,
was developed east of the Appalachian uplift and included the
Shawangunk mountains. In it were accumulated the sediments
washed down from the adjoining mountains during Triassic and
early Jurassic times, to form the red standstones and shales of
the “ Newark System/' extending across the New Jersey border
into Rockland county, and recently yielding at Fort Lee one
saurian of Triassic age. The great red sandstone tidal plain was
m turn tilted and heavily faulted, and along the fault lines and12
between the strata of shale and sandstone welled up the great
outpourings of basaltic lava which formed the trap rocks of the
Palisades and parallel ridges to the westward.
Toward the close of the Age of Reptiles our eastern coast line
began subsiding beneath the Atlantic ocean, converting its shores
into a coastal swamp over Long Island; but the greatest factor
in Long Island’s history was the Glacial epoch at the close of
the Age of Mammals, when the ice cap extended downward from
eastern Canada over almost the whole of New York State and
left as its terminal moraine the long, irregular line of hills of
boulder, clay and sand stretching along the northern shore of
Long Island across Staten Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
westward. To the waters impounded behind the moraines we owe
our building clays. This great ice sheet, as studied by Fairchild,
Woodworth, and others, gave the final touch to our landscape
and to our agricultural lands, gouging out valleys, blocking
rivers, piling heaps of detritus across valleys during its slow
retreat to the north, profoundly modifying the topography of the
State, shaping the basins of many of our lakes, the courses of our
rivers, and the character of our soil. At the beginning of the ice
retreat the cap so blocked the St Lawrence river valley that Lake
Ontario found its outlet along the Mohawk river into the Hud-
son. All the life records of the later geologic periods in New
York State were swept away by erosion or buried beneath the
debris of the Ice Age. Only from the swamps and peat bogs
formed since the retreat of the ice have been disinterred the
skeletons of mastodons1 and other extinct forms.
The animal and plant life of the State formed the second great
branch of the survey. As a result New York State has taken a
leading part in the encouragement and development of the study
of birds in this country, from 1844, when the State issued a
quarto volume of 380 pages and 141 colored plates by James E.
De Kay, “ On the Birds of New York,” to 1910, when it published
the first of two superb quartos by Eaton with colored plates by
Fuertes; and here again the survey has been more or less directly
the means of bringing out the latent ability of sons of the State.
Among the ornithologists, all natives of New York, who have
1 Mastodon and mammoth remains are found in swamps and beaches of
the same age, though the occurrence of the latter is comparatively rare;
they are contemporaneous, but it is probable that the mastodons survived the
mammoths within our area. (J. M. C.)13
been developed during this period, are Giraud, Mearns, whose
researches have extended all over the Union and to Africa, Mer-
riam, former head of the United States Biological Survey and
our leading field naturalists, Roosevelt, Bicknell, Ralph, Bagg
and many others.1
The survey produced in 1842 De Kay’s four volumes devoted
to the mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, also the extinct mam-
mals of the State as they were known in 1842. Later contribu-
tions to the mammalian life independent of the. survey were
Merriam’s “ Mammals of the Adirondacks,” 1882 and 1884, Mil-
ler’s “ Preliminary List of the Mammals of New York ” in 1889,
and Mearns’s “ Mammals of the Hudson Highlands” and “ Mam-
mals of the Catskill Mountains.”
The practical results growing out of the State survey are no
less significant than the theoretical, affording the strongest proofs
that discovering and spreading knowledge of nature is the best
investment a state can make, because all wealth and all health
flow from such knowledge. When state funds are used for the
forces which make for production the payment of interest is re-
tarded, perhaps beyond the lifetime of the individual who makes
the discovery and when returns do come the discoverer is often
forgotten; only in rare instances does he benefit from them. The
chief applications of the results of research have been to agri-
culture and mining; in fact, the science of agriculture was one of
the original motives in the organization of the survey, and the
four volumes which Ebenezer Emmons devoted to the agriculture
of New York and to its fruit culture between 1846 and 1854 led
to the organization of the State Agricultural Society and finally
to the State Agricultural Department.
The increase in the value of the mineral product2 of the State
since the organization of the survey has been approximately 3000
1C. Hart Merriam, New York City, 1855; Edgar A. Mearns, Highland
Falls, 1856; E. H. Eaton, Springville, 1866; E. P. Bicknell, Woodmere, L. I.
2Mineral productions of the State:
1837	1911
Iron ores from within the State.................... 1 000 000	3 184 054
Clay materials ....................................... 150	000	9	734	744
Building	stones.....................................   500	000	5	520	800
Salt .............................................. 625 000	2 191 485
Gypsum	........................................  IS	000	1	092	598
Cement ..............................................    150	000	3	065	334
Materials not produced in 1837..................... ........ 6 784 09314
per cent. The fact speaks for itself without claiming for the
geological organization all the credit for this tremendous
development. The approximate output of minerals of all kinds
for the year 1837, the first year in which the survey did actual
work, was two and one-half millions; the total mineral production
for the year 1911 for materials within the State was thirty-one
and one-half millions; but including the ores brought in from
outside, the production is seventy-four and one-half millions,
ranking New York State as the sixth state of the Union, in the
value of its total output. The preeminence of Pennsylvania, Illi-
nois, Alabama, and West Virginia is due to their coal, that of
California to its oil. As a result of the careful surveys made
within the last few years the volumetric totals of the iron ores
still available for commerce are shown to reach nearly one bil-
lion tons, interesting as indexes of the potential natural wealth
of a state which has no coal and comparatively little oil. The
scientific foundation of this development is the volume “ Miner-
alogy of New York,” by Lewis C. Beck, published in 1842.
The most recent instance of the interrelations between pure
science and progress is that developed by the need of the city
of New York for an increased water supply, involving the second
greatest engineering task of modern times. When work on the
new aqueduct was actively undertaken ten years ago, the chief
engineer, J. Waldo Smith, one of the broadest minded men of
his profession, realized that the geological structure and the
present and past history of the region to be traversed entered in
a fundamental way into the problem. The region embraces the
Triassic and other formations of the State from the Upper De-
vonian down to the Archaean, formations to which the survey
has devoted pure research since 1836, formations folded, faulted,
and metamorphosed in a most complicated manner. The surface
features are concealed everywhere with drift of the Glacial epoch,
which at places like a thick mantle covers buried channels or
preglacial systems of drainage which cut the bedrock to depths
much below the present level. At the Storm King crossing of
the Hudson the rock bottom is 800 feet or more below the sur-
face of the river. With their thorough understanding of these
facts, the consulting geologists, Kemp, Crosby and Berkey, aided
the engineers in selecting the best locations and in forecasting
the underground geology for the preparation of specifications for
the contractors. Conversely the great tunnels and sections ofi5
the engineer have laid bare new matters of great value to the
geologist; matters of inference have become the recorded facts
of observation; estimates have given way to precise measure-
ment in feet and inches. All this experience, embracing so much
of human, scientific and technical value has been brought
together in two volumes, one of which, by Berkey, has been
published with abundant profiles and illustrations in a bulletin
of the State Museum and the other, by Crosby, specially relating
to Long Island, is about to be published.
The scientific growth of New York State is the past, the
present, and a forecast of the future of our State Museum. The^
offspring has become the parent; the museum now conducts the
geological and other surveys of the State. From its slow birth'
under the Natural History Survey between 1836 and 1843, under
vicissitudes of name, of scope, of direction, and of dwelling place,
the State Museum is now the titular head of the survey and of the
entire science division under the New York State Education
Department. The paleontologic, geologic, mineralogic, and
botanic departments, independent offshoots of the survey, were
brought under the Regents of the University in 1883, and in 1889
the museum was made an integral part of the University of the
State of New York. A further concentration took place in 1904
when the University was fused with the New York State Educa-
tion Department, under which a division of science was created.
This division was charged with the broad powers of adminis-
tration of the museum and with the geology, paleontology, bot-
any, entomology, zoology, and archeology; in brief, it is the
scientific scope of the old Natural History Survey of 1836 with
the added custodianship of all the materials brought in. As
compared with our central government, it is the United States
Geological Survey, a part of the Agricultural Department and
the National Museum swept into one under a bureau of educa-
tion. Such unification is, so far as we know, unique; it is certainly
logical in the sense that all state-supported scientific work should
be educational in the very broadest sense as well as in the inter-
ests of pure research; as an administrative system it is an experi-
ment which is well worth trying by our State, for it may be of
value in Washington, where concentration of all the scientific
bureaus of the government has long been under consideration.
Under the directors Hall, Smock, and Merrill, and in the years
that have passed since 1904, the date of the appointment ofi6
John Mason Clarke as head of the museum and of the survey, the
historic lines of geology and paleontology have been ably sus-
tained, lines which are among the most honored traditions of the
institution, together with greater activity along lines which had
not been especially developed in its previous history. Thus while
the study of plant and insect life has followed the earlier lines of
economic service to the State, there has been continued advance
in the study of mammal and bird life, of the past and present life
of the Indian. Every effort is being made to represent in full in
the museum the fauna of this State and to exhibit it as effectively
as practicable. In archeology the unique field is the study and
portrayal of the culture of the Iroquois, which brings the museum
in touch with the 6000 Indians of the State, their history, am-
bitions, and ideals, and it is fortunate that the preservation of
the traditions and the folklore of this declining race is entrusted
to the State Museum. Following up the work of Lewis H. Mor-
gan, who probably contributed more to initiating and advancing
anthropological work among the Indians of the State than any
other person, there were the writings of Beauchamp and the
studies of Converse, while among the younger contributors may
be mentioned Parker, the present archeologist, and Skinner.1
The law also provides that the State Museum shall cover the
field of history, and the initiation of this problem is large because
it has hitherto been entirely neglected by the State and important
because of its educational bearings.
The original function of the museum as a depository of all
the scientific materials brought in by the survey should be ex-
tended along lines similar to those followed by the National
Museum at Washington, so that the new Conservation Commis-
sion with its interests in the forests, the fisheries, and the game
of the State shall find the rooms of the State Museum equipped
for the scientific materials which come to the commission. Sim-
ilarly the Department of the State Engineer, the Departments of
Agriculture, of Health, and Highways, should regard the halls
of the museum as the place where the people are to find the
visible educational materials developed with the growth of these
several departments. This cooperation is in keeping with the
unification of the advance of pure and applied science in the
progress of the State.
1 Harriet Maxwell Converse, Arthur C. Parker, Alanson Skinner.17
We may well ask what are the distinctive features of an ideal
state museum as contrasted with great civic museums like the
American Museum of Natural History of New York, the Field
Museum of Natural History of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum
of Pittsburgh, or a great national museum like that in Washing-
ton? Why should a state have its own museum, apart from the
historical and political reasons which have located this institution
at Albany? The answer is largely given in the preceding portions
of this address. The museum is the natural scientific center of
the State government; it is the natural depository of all the ma-
terial brought together by the State surveys; it is the natural
custodian of all purely scientific State records; it is the natural
center of the study of the resources of the State as a political
unit; it must maintain its capacity for productiveness in pure
scientific research — pure science has been the justification of the
State Museum from the beginning of its history. For example,
it is justified in issuing a monograph on the birds of New York
State, as it is now doing, because this kind of publication belongs
to the museum historically, because the education of the people
of the State in the important matter of the economic value of
bird life must be accompanied by Jie preservation and exhibition
of the materials on which the volume is based. In brief, the
distinctive sphere and scope of the State Museum corresponds
with the scientific interests and welfare of the people within the
geographic boundaries of the State.
Yet in no relation is the function of the State Museum more
full of promise than in its relation to school education, a relation
which has been established since 1884 but which should be greatly
extended in the future. The peculiar teaching quality of a mu-
seum is that it teaches in the way nature teaches, by speaking to
the mind direct and not through the medium of another mind.
This principle of natural instruction is being carried out in the
development of the exhibits of the museum, and through pho-
tography these exhibitions may well be extended to the schools
of the State. The museum should be the center from which the
visual and practical instruction of the children of the State in
science should emanate. The pulse of the new museum should
he felt in every country school in the State and in the schools of
every one of its cities which has not developed its own museum
center. The museum should supply the schools with collections
of scientific materials; it should distribute traveling demonstrative18
collections in natural history. In brief, the museum should supply
the State Education Department with all materials for the visual
instruction in the scientific features of the State for distribution
among the schools. Our school children should receive their
first inspiration in science not from abroad but from the things
about them. Our Education Department could not do a wiser
thing than to popularize the technical geology of the State in
a school book and put such a volume into the hands of every
pupil; it would exert a vast influence. There is every reason
why the State Museum should do for the resources of the State
what the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia is doing for the
people of Pennsylvania.
The execution of these ideals requires a combination of scien-
tific and administrative ability with a strong sense of public duty,
which I dwelt upon in the opening paragraphs of this address.
Our great Commonwealth is to be congratulated on having at
the head of its educational system a man of the breadth of view
of Dr Andrew S. Draper, and at the head of this institution a
man of such thorough preparation, wide sympathies and execu-
tive ability as its present director. In assuming the centralized
control both of the Geological Survey and the State Museum in
1904 Dr John Mason Clarke inherited positions rich in traditions
and undertook no light task. Long years of experience as an
assistant to James Hall had given him a wide and thorough
knowledge of the State’s geology and paleontology, and, quite
as important, of its legislators. Although a paleontologist and
stratigrapher himself, all the other lines centering in his office
have received his support. While the great monographs on the
faunas of the Devonian, the graptolites, the ancient sponges and
the eurypterids have seen the light, the areal geology has had its
full recognition, the ancient crystallines have received no less
attention than the fossiliferous beds and the mineral resources.
Botany, zoology and archeology have had their due and are well
represented in the publications of the State Museum. The geo-
logic map of the State has progressed on the topographic scale
of one mile to the inch, so far that almost one-half of the area
of the State has been plotted in minute detail. The museum
has kept in touch with and published the geological results ob-
tained in connection with the development of the aqueduct. It
has availed itself of the cooperation of many of the most able
specialists in the State.19
It is now the great opportunity of our State not only to main-
tain liberally a museum the purpose of which is to present in
fulness the character of its natural resources, but to furnish the
State Department of Education with the means of spreading the
work of the museum in popularized form throughout the schools
of the State. The appropriations have doubled in recent years,
now amounting approximately to $40,000, but they are insuffi-
cient to develop a museum worthy of the dignity of the State
of New York either along the lines of exhibition or those of
public education.
The truest measure of civilization and of intelligence in the
government of a state is the support of its institutions of science,
for the science of our time in its truest sense is not the opinions
or prejudices, the strength or weakness of its votaries, it is the
sum of our knowledge of nature with its infinite applications to
state welfare, to state progress and to the distribution of human
happiness.
1