The Museum represents a large financial investment and 

 holds in trust many collections of high scientific value, re- 

 quiring continual expert care to prevent deterioration. Any 

 reduction in the annual contributions of members or in the 

 city appropriation, even for a single year, would not only 

 curtail the development and activity of the Museum but, by 

 necessitating reduction of staff, leave valuable material 

 without proper care. 



The past one hundred and thirty years of the Museum's 

 history have included not only periods of enthusiastic and 

 generous support but also periods of misfortune and neglect. 

 Four years after the wave of popular enthusiasm which elect- 

 ed Dr. L'Herminier Superintendent of the Museum in 1815, 

 he found himself unable to make a living and was compelled 

 against his will to resign, leaving the Museum apparently 

 without a regular curator. Again in 1850-1854, over three 

 hundred persons contributed specimens and in the following 

 forty-five years devoted curators built up the largest museum 

 in the South. Yet a few years later this splendid collection 

 was decaying rapidly, with no regular curator to care for it 

 and with only the ridiculously inadequate sum of $250 a year 

 to save it from utter and immediate ruin. 



When one of the birds figured by Audubon is rescued from 

 the rubbish or such invaluable specimens as the Carolina 

 Paroquet or the Apteryx or the Elliott Herbarium are nearly 

 destroyed as the price of neglect it is obvious that friends of 

 the Charleston Museum should not rest until an adequate 

 endowment gives reasonable assurance of the ability of the 

 Museum to care permanently for material entrusted to it. 



Administration 



Undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of 

 the past year has been the establishment of closer relations 

 between the Museum and the public, including the schools 

 and business organizations of the city and scientific institu- 



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