CARE OF A COLLECTION 



87 



quiet, — they do not like to be disturbed at their meals. So they 

 rarely effect permanent lodgment in a collection that is constantly 

 handled, though the doors stand open for hours daily. As a con- 

 sequence, the degree of our diligence in studying birdskins is likely 

 to become the measure of our success in preserving them. I once 

 read a work, by an eminent divine, on the Murnl Uses of Dark 

 Things, under which head the author included every dark thing from 

 earthquakes to mosquitoes. If there be a moral use in the " dark 

 thing" that museum pests certainly are to us, we have it here. 

 The very bugs urge on our work. 



Fig. 13.— Alexander Wilson's School-house, near Gray's Ferry, Philadklphiv USA 

 bvom a drawing by M. S. Weaver, Oct. 22, 1841, received by Elliot Cones, February 1870, from 

 Malvma Lawson, daughter of Alexander Lawson, Wilson's engraver. See article in the Pcnn 

 Monthly June 18,9, p. 443. The drawing was first engraved on wood, and published, by 

 lliomas Meehan, in the Gardener's Monthly, August 1880, p. 248. The present impression is 

 irom an electrotype of that woodcut. The size of the original is 5-10 X 3-95 inches. This re- 

 minder of early days of "Field Ornithology" in America maybe further attested by the 

 signature of -^ j 



-25^ 



