Director' s A?intial Report. 7 



other set of men take charge of the people visiting the museum, 

 while in this smaller establishment we have but one set of men for 

 all the scientific work and police duty as well, and with the mixed 

 and uneducated population of this town the latter is no sinecure. 

 Every day given to public exhibition then in this Museum means 

 so much less scientific work. Our publications reach a larger 

 audience than could crowd into the exhibition halls. 



Let us look for a moment at the scientific work that is possible 

 to this Museum even in the comparatively contradled area that is 

 its chosen field. The problems to be solved are mau}' and curious: 

 in the study of the development and distribution of land vShells 

 there are many j^ears of indefatigable work for many enthusiastic 

 naturalists, and this work cannot possibly be done away from these 

 islands where alone the shells are found. The clue to the secrets 

 of variation is perhaps the most promising yet suggested, and it 

 seems our duty to follow it as far as we can. In the study of the 

 life history of our fishes hardly an introdudlion has been written, 

 and the same is true in all the pathways of our tropical marine 

 life. The field is almost unbounded, the harvest is at hand, and 

 shall the competent and enthusiastic young men who compose the 

 staff of the Bishop Museum be compelled to sit at the border of the 

 field and see others and strangers enter in and reap where they 

 should gather ? 



If in the judgment of the Trustees this Museum is not suffi- 

 ciently endowed to attempt these wider problems there are others 

 nearer home that surely should be attempted if this Museum is 

 really what it has been pronounced, the most complete Hawaiian 

 museum in the world. To refer to a definite matter : — the ruins 

 of the ancient heiau and puiihonua have not been studied, and 

 although two types of heiau have been recognized, — the truncated 

 pyramid and the walled enclosure, — we do not yet know in what 

 proportion these existed, nor whether the difference in strudlure 

 is due to a differing cult. All these ruins are fast disappearing; 



[199] 



