170 Naturalist at Large 



man is entirely entitled to his opinion and the average 

 curator is a queer fish. 



Now granted that the curator is a queer fish, is he a rare 

 fish? I fear me the answer today is nay. My friend Alex- 

 ander Wetmore, Director of the United States National 

 Museum, in an address at the opening of the Dyche Mu- 

 seum at the University of Kansas, remarked, "There are 

 today throughout the world more than seven thousand 

 museums, of which more than a thousand are in the United 

 States." Every museum has at least one curator, and the 

 breed came into being, no doubt, back in the days when 

 the "Repositerry of Curiosity," the Anlage of our Uni- 

 versity Museum here at Harvard, was visited by Francis 

 Goelet on the twenty-fifth of October 1750. Unfortu- 

 nately, Mr. Goelet does not tell us how old the museum 

 was at that date. He does, however, tell us that its treasures 

 included "horns and bones, fishes' skins and other objects, 

 and a piece of tanned Negro hide." ^ 



Professor John Winthrop, Hollis Professor of Mathe- 

 matics and Natural Philosophy, evidently had started even 

 at this early date to make what we call a "Glory Hole." I 

 have had some interesting experiences cleaning out "Glory 

 Holes" in Cambridge, Boston, and Salem. Only a few 

 months ago I opened a parcel in Salem, the wrapping paper 

 of which was superscribed, "Please do not disturb these 

 shells. Caleb Cooke, February 1857." This behest had been 

 scrupulously obeyed for eighty-five years and six months. 

 The parcel proved to be pure gold, for the shells were 



^ It's a pity this burned. Wendell Phillips could have waved 

 it instead of the bloody shirt. 



