Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1880 [PAGE 34]

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32 The Museum is peculiarly fortunate in its collections in Zoology, possessing, in mounted specimens or skeletons, nearly all the ruminants of North America, except the musk ox; and representatives of all Orders of mammals, except Proboscidce; exhibiting 50 species by 80 mounted specimens, with numerous skeletons. In birds, it represents all the families of North America, having 240 species represented by over 300 specimens. Its fishes are about 300. Its articulates and radiates have recently received valuable accessions from the Smithsonian Institute. If this Museum falls short of expectation, it may be pleaded in excuse, that it was the last of the departments to receive legislative aid; it dates such help only three years ago (1877), and hence has just been commenced. But it is the pride of the Institution that the appropriation made ($3,000), having been chiefly expended for the raw material, the application of home industry, and careful, intelligent economy, have produced a collection of valuable, typical specimens, that could not be purchased for more than double that sum. And it stands a fit monument to the industry and skill developed by the practical system which aims to utilize its home resources, and has so far succeeded in the accomplishment of so desirable and honorable a result. All donations, which are preserved as specimens in the Museum, have the contributor's name placed upon the label, as donor. Also, a book is kept, in which these names are entered, alphabetically, with specimen contributed. For contributions valued at more than fifty dollars, there is a special bulletin hanging in the Museum upon which the names of such contributors are written, with a statement of the donation and its valuation.

SCHOOL OF DOMESTIC SCIENCE. This is the first School of Domestic Science of high grade, and with a complete course, organized in the United States, if not the first in the world.

OBJECT OF T H E SCHOOL.

It is the aim of the School to give to earnest and capable young women a liberal and practical education, which shall fit them for their great duties and trusts, making them the equals of their educated husbands and associates, and enabling them to bring the aids of science and culture to the all-important labors and vocations of womanhood. This School proceeds upon the assumption that the housekeeper needs education as much as the architect, the nurse as well as the physician, the leaders of society as surely as the leaders of senates,