1887-1888 - American Museum of Natural History

9
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND
ETHNOLOGY.
[Under the charge of Prof. A. S. BICKMORR.]
In accordance with the contract between the State Department
of Public Instruction and the Museum, for providing free instruction
to the teachers of the common schools and to the Normal
Schools 'of the State, I have prepared and delivered twenty
lectures in this city, and have visited and lectured at each of the
Normal Schools.
The large attendance upon the lectures describing the countries
I had visited last summer induced me to go again to Europe,
at my own personal expense, and travel throughout Egypt,
Palestine, Turkey, Greece and Italy; and in order to gain personal
experience for future lectures, I journeyed throughout
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Southern Norway and
Scotland, and arrived in New York after an absence of six
months.
As the small lecture room at the Museum is only calculated to
seat two hundred and seventy-five persons, and only one hundred
more can be crowded into it, the Trustees hired Chickering Hall
for the autumn course of lectures upon the following countries,
viz: Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Scotland, India,
China, Japan and the Pacific Islands. This hall, after reserving
space for the apparatus, contained eleven hundred and ninety-six
seats. The largest number present was 1,430, and the average
attendance i,329, so that 133 persons on an average had to stand
or sit on the steps of the aisles at every lecture.
This is the only series of ten lectures in the whole course of
eighty, extending over four years, that could have been delivered
outside the walls of the Museum, for the reason that this instruction
to teachers, to be by them repeated to their pupils, must be
illustrated not only by photographic views of specimens, but
must be immediately followed by a careful examination of the
costly collections on exhibition in our halls.
The growth of the attendance upon the instruction given by
this department is shown by the following statement of the
number present at the opening lectures of the Autumn Courses
for the past four years, viz:
October i 8, i884,. 221
I0, i885, 324
i6, i886, ...... 358
8, i887,. 1,285
The largest number present previous to the beginning of the
course just finished was 504, and the sudden increase from this
figure to an average attendance of I,329 is a gratifying proof of