Transcribe Notice of the Ward cabinets...the University of Rochester (1863)

HISTORY OF THE CABINETS.

THE material of which these Cabinets are composed, was collected by Mr. Henry A. Ward, a native and citizen of Rochester, N.Y. This gentleman had, as a student of Natural Science, visited our American localities quite extensively, and had obtained at them considerable collections of Minerals and Fossils.

He afterwards spent six years i Europe, studying in the large museums, and traveling very widely through that continent and into Asia and Africa, in executing the detail of a plan which he had formed for a large Mineralogical and Geological Museum.

After his return to America, he completed this plan by obtaining, at original localities and from collectors, a large number of the specimens which are peculiar to this continent.

The museum thus formed was one of peculiar value in its scientific and educational character. In a letter offering it to the Trustees of the University of Rochester, Mr. Ward says:

"I look upon the Cabinets as being for many reasons preeminently adapted for a large institution of learning. I have collected them, almost from the first, upon a plan which was strictly an educational one, and which contemplated a full and equal illustration of these sciences. I have wished that the student shall find in these collections a specimen representing each point of mineral composition or structure, or form of extinct life, to which the study of his text-book, or his wider reading, shall have called his attention.

"I have not, as a rule, labored to accumulate species, augmenting their number in a vain effort to obtain as many of them as possible, but have rather sought to gather together such specimens as form representative types of the several Genera, Orders, Classes, and other important divisions, I have obtained these, as far as