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To the Trustees of The American Museum of Natural History and to the City of New York

THE COMING FIFTY YEARS

BY

President HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

"Upon the subject of Education, not presuming to dictate any plans or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in."

-Lincoln's First Public Speech, March 9th, 1832.

Our fiftieth annual report (1869-1918) was chiefly retrospective. The development of the Museum since its foundation was seen to coincide with the period in which man1 has learned that he is a part of nature, that his spiritual, moral and physical welfare depends on obedience to natural laws; that from the religious point of view natural laws are divine laws. The American Museum was founded for an educational purpose clearly expressed in our Charter of 1869:

"FOR THE PURPOSE OF ESTABLISHING AND MAIN-
TAINING IN SAID CITY A MUSEUM AND LIBRARY OF
NATURAL HISTORY; OF ENCOURAGING AND DEVELOP-
ING THE STUDY OF NATURAL SCIENCE; OF ADVANC-
ING THE GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF KINDRED SUBJECTS,
AND TO THAT END OF FURNISHING POPULAR INSTRUC-
TION."

We are developing this kind of education along many old and many new lines. Rather than theories or hypo

In 1863 was published Lyell's great work "The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man." In 1871 appeared Darwin's "Descent of Man."

theses, we aim to present clearly the facts of nature and let these facts tell their own story and exert an influence more convincing than that of precepts or of books.

During the coming fifty years we hope to continue this kind of education and to do it still more widely and effectively. In view of its future great possibilities we regard nature-education as still in its infancy. We have new ideas and plans for this larger work, we have the intelligence and the sense of public responsibility, but to go ahead we must have more space and more means.

Museum
Going
Backward

Our fifty-first annual report is regretfully opened with the statement that the Museum as a whole is now going backward, not forward. It is like a grown man confined in the clothing of a youth. While progress is being made in many directions, it is not symmetrical, and in order to secure an harmonious educational treatment and to arrange truthfully our present collections, the Museum needs double the space which it now occupies. It is fifteen years since the building has been enlarged and during this time our collections have nearly doubled. This is not said in criticism or complaint of anyone. The Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the City has recently manifested its confidence in the institution by increasing the annual maintenance fund fifty per cent.; the Trustees and friends of the Museum have been most generous both in gifts and bequests; the Board of Education is also in friendly coöperation with our school work.

The fact that we are now going backward is owing, first, to the unprecedented growth of our collections, second, to the actual lack of available building funds by the City, and, third, to the interruption by the war of building extension through the personal subscriptions of the Trustees which was planned in 1913. This movement was well under way and would have given us a SOUTHEAST WING (ASIATIC HALL) and COURT BUILDING (HALL OF OCEAN LIFE) had not the war come on.

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