8 Dirccior' s Anmial Report. 



number of steamers arriving, and there are several things in re- 

 gard to these visitors that seem worth noticing. First, their aver- 

 age sta}' in the Museum is less than fifteen minutes; then they are 

 almost exclusively American or European; they require more 

 supervision than the mixed nationalities on public days; they have 

 the disease that seems to attack many modern tourists all over the 

 world (which compels them to annex plates, spoons or napkins on 

 steamers or at hotels, or the se(5tion numbers in Pullmann cars), 

 and as none of these souvenirs are to be found in the Museum, the 

 specimens being carefully prote(5ted in cases, all exposed labels 

 are taken as proof that they have been in the Museum; they rarely 

 buy a guide book. This will show that at times there are in the 

 Museum other curiosities than those belonging there. Less 

 troublesome and more amusing are the parties that come with a 

 leader who "knows it all" and therefore disdains a guide book. 

 One such leader was lately heard telling his party that the fine 

 specimen of a sperm whale in Hawaiian Hall was not a sperm 

 whale at all (the Museum people ought to know better), it was a 

 bottle-nose whale. Another informed his companions that the 

 stones of which the adzes were formerly made were very rare, 

 in fact had been exhausted; still another, that these same stones 

 were all meteorites! It sometimes seems hardly worth while to 

 label specimens. 



TABLE OF ATTENDANCE. 



[262] 



