AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, New York city, situated in Man hattan Park, occupies a palatial building ex tending along the whole front of the north side of 77th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. The institution was incor porated under a charter of 6 April 1869, and is administered by a board of trustees, under a constitution revised and amended to 5 Feb. 1912. The foundation stone of the building was laid 2 June 1874. The Peary and other meteorites, the anthropological and ethnological collections made by the Morris K. Jesup expedition to the North Pacific regions, totem poles of the Ilaida Indians, masks and dishes from British Colum bia, carvings from Vancouver Island, basketry and utensils of the Chilcoten and Kakima In dians, articles and models illustrating the life of the Eskimos of North America, the Shoshone Indians, the Gros Venties, attract the attention as the visitor enters on the ground floor and ap proaches the free lecture hall, with a seating accommodation for 1,500, which occupies a separate building at the extreme north of the museum. The Jesup collection of woods; archaeological remains of New York; the Hyde collection from the ancient pueblos, cliff-houses and burial-caves of the Southwest; the collec tion of reproductions and casts of the ancient monoliths, bas-reliefs of Mexico and Central America presented by the Duke of Lonbat, as well as other rare specimens, all illustrate the pre-Columbian life of the continent. Animals,
singly and in groups, masterpieces of the taxi dermist's art, conspicuous among which are the cases of moose, bison, and musk-ox, are un doubtedly the finest in the world. Of particular excellence also is the collection of birds, especially the bird-rock group and the water ousel group, and the butterflies and insects. Of great value is the collection of minerals, in cluding the Tiffany exhibit from the Paris exhibition of 1889 purchased and presented by J. Pierpont Morgan; collections of meteorites and geological specimens, including the collec tion of the late Prof. J. Hall; and specimens of vertebrate palaeontology, Cretaceous fish; an ichthyosaurus with young, showing it to have been viviparous; and hundreds of other sped mens of bygone ages, priceless to palmontolo gists. On the top floor are the mounted skele tons of antediluvian monsters, the brontosaurus, giant sloth, mammoth, etc., the collection of shells, a laboratory for photography and a li brary containing over 55,000 volumes on natural history, accessible to members and students, in cluding that of the Lyceum of Natural History founded in 1817 and incorporated in 1818, since 1876 known as the New York Academy of Sciences affiliated to the Museum.