9 



Amateur Fish Museums 



Amateur nature museums are surprisingly numerous. The urge 

 to collect things is strong within everyone. There are those 

 who collect books, stamps, antiques, neckties, deer antlers, cook- 

 ing recipes, photographs, bird lists, guns, tools, shrubs, fishing 

 tackle— one can go on indefinitely. Another strong urge in men 

 is to delve into things of nature; every week end of the year, 

 throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of people visit 

 museums of natural history. Combine the two— interest in 

 nature and the urge to collect— and a powerful force is born. 

 One of the best ways to satisfy this urge is to build an amateur 

 museum at home. 



These home museums vary greatly. My attention has been 

 called to every degree of endeavor in this respect, from a shelf 

 covered with sea shells to entire rooms lined with glass cases 

 holding valuable collections of minerals. All summer camps 

 for children have a nature museum of some sort. Tourist stops 

 in hundreds of places around the country have museums as 

 attractions. Since I am a professional museum man, I tend to 

 examine these various amateur museums with a critical eye. I 

 find that the one great omission in nature museums is the lack 

 of fish exhibitions— this despite the fact that fishes and fishing 

 draw more popular interest than all the other amateur museum 

 subjects combined! I have scanned all available literature per- 

 taining to fish preservation and exhibition, both technical and 

 popular, and find that fishes are either treated very lightly 



159 



