THE COLLECTIONS IN THE SOCIETY'S MUSEUM. 477 



" be found directly it is wanted, and they must be frequently inspected to see 

 " that they are free from moth or other deleterious influence. " 



Thus far preliminary. Let us now turn our attention to our own museum 

 and try to see how nearly we attain to the general principles that our authority 

 has laid down. 



The first and foremost point that is of importance for the very life of the 

 museum is the question of curator. Now Sir William Flower was speaking 

 more or less of museums in general and public museums in particular, so that 

 we have to some extent to modify his remarks in order to apply them to our 

 own individual case. He emphasized the necessity of a really competent 

 curator for the care, arrangement, etc., of the specimens in the museum. Such 

 an individual is of course with us an impossibility, for a society of amateur 

 naturalists, such as we are, cannot afford to spend the limited funds at its 

 disposal on paying an adequate salary to a .qualified official such as he had in 

 his mind. Our funds— so far as they go— must be mainly devoted to the 

 purpose on which we at present spend about half our total income : that of 

 course, as you know, is our journal, for by it alon8 can we put the results of 

 the Society's work in the hands of the large majority of our members — scattered 

 as they are over nearly the whole globe. 



We have therefore to rely upon the voluntary work of those members who 

 are on the spot and can lend a helping hand towards bringing the collections 

 in our museum up to a high standard of utility. Those who have had no 

 hand in the inner working of the Society, can have no idea of the amount 

 of real genuine hard wort — congenial as it may be to those who have under- 

 taken it from time to time — that is entailed in the curatorship of our museum, 

 and I would specially ask you to remember in this connection that the real 

 bulk of the duties of curator fall upon our honorary secretaries in addition 

 to their already heavy work of looking after the Society's interests generally — 

 in the way of strictly secretarial work — and the equally difficult task of editing 

 the journal, which latter involves a very great deal more solid work than most 

 of you have any idea of — and all this with the assistance of one clerk for the 

 office part of it, and one youngster for the taxidermy department and as care- 

 taker of the collections. 



It therefore falls as a duty to the Society on those members who are resident 

 in Bombay to provide the assistance that is absolutely necessary for the carry- 

 ing out of the Society's work in the way of curatorship of the collections, and 

 this can only be done by individual members undertaking the charge of certain 

 departments, which idea is, as you know, contemplated in our rules by the 

 provision of power to the Committee to appoint certain of its members to such 

 departments as they may deem advisable. Tn time past we have had many 

 such willing workers, in whose hands the collections have been developed in 

 a way that could never have been expected under any other circumstances, 

 with the result that other members of the Society all over the country 

 have been encouraged to avail themselves of their opportunities for really 



