growth up to the present time. Beginning as it did at the time when its only assets were its hopes, he has followed the history of the Museum, at first when it existed only on paper, then when it became the tenant of two rooms in the Boston Athenaeum, then when it had outgrown those rooms and moved to what was considered at that time a building which would last for generations in its service, and he has followed as others of its trustees have done, the history—I may almost say the marvelous history—of its development in that building so that the building has had to be increased twice, so that only a few years ago, less than a generation after it was started, he found it bursting its bonds in all directions. The collections are now multiplying in such a way and to such an extent that we are face to face with an entirely new problem, realizing that the land on which we stand, although we occupy but half of it at the present time, will be far too small for our purpose, knowing that at the present day we could fill that entire lot of land with things in our possession if we had the building available, so that a new life is starting out for the institution and we stand at the threshold between the parting of the old and the new generation in its development. I speak of it now because I look forward—and we all look forward—to that development as a new means of bringing about co-operation with Harvard University, as a new opportunity of serving Harvard University as Harvard University has helped us.
It may interest you to know—I think it is a significant fact—that in connection with the plans for the new building which are now in course of preparation each curator and each head of a department has been asked to work out for himself his ideal of the needs of his department, to put that into definite shape and to hand it over to the architects to be carried out in concrete form so far as may be practicable. Now, it has turned out that, although each one of those gentlemen has worked independently and often without the knowledge of his companion as to what his plans were to be, in every case—I think I am right in saying in every case—among the requirements which were stated as part of the necessities of the new building was a small class room in connection with the curator's office. In other words, the curators look forward there to doing the work of teaching as well as
