CHAPTER XIV 



Lifework 



XHERE are many different kinds of museums and I 

 know little or nothing about museums of art or of history, 

 and not so much as I should hke to know about museums 

 of archaeology and ethnology. But of museums attempting 

 to aid public instruction or advanced instruction in biol- 

 ogy, I think I can speak ex cathedra, for I have visited cer- 

 tainly a hundred of them and have worked in one pretty 

 much all of my hfe. It is quite natural that I should have 

 asked myself a thousand times, "Why have the damn things 

 anyway? Am I simply caring for an accumulation of junk 

 in the final analysis, or is what I am doing serving a useful 

 purpose?" However, when I look back on the number of 

 intelligent questions which have come from all sorts of 

 persons, and which I think I have answered, I feel a little 

 more encouraged about things. 



Of course, there are the economic aspects of museum 

 service, the help we give the economic entomologist, the 

 physician, particularly the physician in the tropics, who 

 is up against insect-borne diseases and snails carrying in- 

 testinal parasites, and poisonous snakes, and indeed poison- 

 ous animals, running from vertebrates to jelly fishes. Some 

 bats convey rabies and transmit trypanosomiasis, a para- 

 sitic disease in horses, and so on ad mfi?iitu?n. These beasts 

 cannot be talked about or discussed without having a name 



