in the Botanic Garden, and with geological and zoölogical collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy.
Thus far, the collections illustrated physics, mechanics, and natural history; but with the foundation of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology a new era began. That museum was devoted to the records of prehistoric races, and of the savage, barbarous, or semi-civilized peoples who had inhabited the American continent. The admirable collection of living trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants at the Arnold Arboretum followed. Next came the Fogg Museum, with its representations of Greek and Roman art, and of the later arts of the Latin races around the Mediterranean. Then the Semitic Museum illustrated the civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, and Judea. Next the history of architecture began to be depicted in the collections of Nelson Robinson, Jr., Hall; and now arrives the Germanic Museum, illustrating the arts and crafts of the Germanic peoples wherever settled, and recalling Teutonic aesthetic achievements from the eleventh to the eighteenth century. Since the establishment of the Peabody Museum, the new university collections, with the single exception of the Arnold Arboretum, have illustrated anthropology, archaeology, and the history of civilization.
The last event in this series is the most interesting of them all, because of the intimate connections of American civilization with the German civilization. Doubtless the growth of the Germanic Museum here would have been slow, if it had not been for the great impulse given to the movement two years ago by the generous and suggestive act of His Majesty, the German Emperor. That act was unique in the history of this university, and indeed in the history of education.
A second great gift to the Museum from German scholars, high officials, and successful men of affairs has just been made known to us by the address to which the distinguished representative of the Emperor has already alluded. This gift is an admirable series of fifty-five galvano-plastic reproductions of precious products of the German silversmiths' art from the middle ages to the eighteenth century. The names of the personages who combined to prepare this gift make a remarkable list. To
