THE EXHIBITION COLLECTIONS 



BY 



THOMAS BARBOUR 



This little guide is intended to aid in answering questions which are 

 constantly being asked concerning the specimens which have been 

 placed on exhibition in this Museum, and it is intended likewise to 

 serve as a brief description of the wealth of material available to re- 

 search workers within its walls. 



Louis Agassiz, who founded the institution as it is now organized, 

 conceived a wholly novel and original plan, when he decided that 

 part of the exhibits should be in their nature faunistic, representing 

 the animals of the various zoogeographical regions, while the other 

 rooms were to be in their nature systematic — or, perhaps better, in 

 view of their inevitable limitation in scope, synoptic. In other words 

 these halls are intended to give an idea of some of the varying inter- 

 related types which make up each group of the animal kingdom. 

 During the Museum's early days its collections were small, and the 

 methods of preparation, especially of taxidermy, were primitive and 

 undeveloped. The result was that masses of specimens were placed 

 on exhibition often because there was no other convenient place to 

 put them, and also because, through ignorance of the art of preserva- 

 tion, no one realized how inherently hideous some of these old speci- 

 mens really were. A few of them still remain because of the difficulty 

 or high cost of replacing them, but most have gone. Today our Mu- 

 seum serves a different purpose than that of the other great museums 

 of the country. It is primarily a research institution, but by virtue 

 of the articles of agreement made between the original trustees of the 

 once semi-independent Museum of Comparative Zoology and the 

 Corporation of Harvard University when it became a part of that in- 

 stitution, some exhibits must always be open to the public. In order 

 that these exhibitions might be more instructive, they have been re- 

 cently, to a large degree, rearranged, much new material added, and 

 many old specimens discarded, although Louis Agassiz's original 

 plan of geographical and systematic rooms has been retained. 



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