Museum Changes, Acquisitions and Plans.

A valuable Mexican collection, which is still uncatalogued, has been received recently by the Peabody Museum. It formed part of that collected by Prince Maximillian from the region of the City of Mexico and the State of Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, and is valuable for its great age and the rarity of the specimens which it includes. These represent gods, masks, and a number of single specimens, as a ceremonial axe, coiled serpent and carved vessel. These are carved from stone and from lava, and in some cases show evidences of an original covering of stucco.

Beside this collection, an interesting set of articles of dress and about five hundred photographs have been brought from the highlands of Guatemala by Mr. Gordon of the Museum. In past years he has been engaged in excavations in the ruined cities of Guatemala, Quirigua and San Augustin, and Copan in Honduras, and during the past winter he has been living in the highlands, among the remnants of the Maya race, the founders of these cities, in order to discover traditions in regard to the history of the cities and the reason they were deserted. These attempts have been without results. The articles of dress, however, which he collected are rare specimens of ethnological interest, as the dress as well as the religious rites is still the same as that used many generations ago. The photographs show other characteristics of the race.

The most important addition to the collection at the Mineralogical Museum in a perfect iron meteorite from Colorado. It is very beautiful in shape and is a very rare specimen, weighing about one hundred and ten pounds.

A collection of many minerals, made by Dr Palache in Arizona, including specimens of banded onyx, is now on the way to the Museum.

The lecture rooms of the new Semitic Museum will not be ready before February and the objects now stored in the Peabody Museum will not be moved to the new building until Professor Lyon returns next September. The formal opening will probably be at the beginning of the next academic year.

Professor Lyon, while on leave of absence abroad, hopes to obtain permission from the Sultan of Turkey, through Hamdi Bey, the curator of the Imperial Museum at Constantinople, for Harvard excavations in Palestine. During the next few months he will probably send boxes of casts of Babylonian and Assyrian objects and any original material, such as clay tablets, which he may get.

Upon the completion of the new addition to the University Museum the Department of Geology and Geography, hitherto established in six rooms of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, will be moved into it and occupy the whole, with the exception of two rooms. In the fifteen new rooms are three exhibition rooms and good accommodations for advanced students. The remaining two rooms will be given to the Museum of Mineralogy and Petrography.

A very rich collection of photographs of Norwegian scenery, to the number of several hundred, bearing on the subject of geology, which was bought last spring with a fund given for that purpose has just been received.