DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 43 



REPORT OF THE CURATOR OF THE GENERAL MUSEUM. 



To the President: 



Sir — I have the honor to make the following report of the condition 

 of the General Museum for the past year : 



There have been few changes of importance in the General Museum dur- 

 ing the past twelve months and the greater part of the time spent upon it 

 has been expended in keeping the specimens from deterioration and making 

 the collections more attractive to the public and more useful to the stu- 

 dents. The public appears to appreciate the opportunities of the Museum 

 better each year and it has attracted several thousand more visitors 

 than ever before. I regret to say that a small and thoughtless minority of 

 these visitors has caused much annoyance by writing their names on the 

 walls and even on some of the specimens in the Museum, and some have 

 gone so far as to cut their initials or full names in the plaster casts 

 which are outside the cases. During week days it has been feasible to 

 watch the Museum with some care and such depredations have been 

 largely prevented, but it became necessary to close the Museum to visit- 

 ors on Sundays or else to employ an attendant to stay in the hall con- 

 stantly while the doors were open. The former course was adopted for the 

 present, but after the damage has been repaired I would recommend that 

 the collections be thrown open to the public again on Sundays and that an 

 attendant be employed to take charge of the Museum at such times. It is 

 much to be regretted that the elephant skeleton, the very large cast of the 

 Elephas tusks, and the cast of the Glyptodon cannot be placed under 

 glass so that defacement would be impossible, but the room is so crowded 

 already that no large cases can be added without still further impairing 

 the appearance and utility of the collections. I might add that already 

 we have been compelled to store away thousands of good specimens from 

 lack of space in the cases, and even as it is most of the cases are so badly 

 crowded that the visitor often gets only a confused idea of the objects 

 represented. 



This is true particularly of the cases of minerals and fossils, and of 

 the reptiles and fishes; it would be easy to fill twice as many cases as we 

 now have with the specimens necessarily stored away. 



The valuation of the collections has not changed materially since last 

 year, the inventory just finished giving a total valuation of $17,853.75. 

 Very little money has been expended of late years in additions to the col- 

 lections, as it has been my belief that such purchases ought to be confined 

 mainly to materials which will be of direct and practical value to the Col- 

 lege student. It is my belief that for this purpose nothing is more 

 important than a full representation of the natural history of the State 

 itself, and I have made every effort consistent with other duties to build 

 up local collections which shall be measurably complete. Of course we 

 never refuse donations of specimens from any part of the world, but it is 

 far more important, in my opinion, that we should have in our Museum 

 good specimens of every Michigan mammal, bird, reptile and fish than that 

 we should have rare and strange specimens from other continents. It 



