A MUSEUM ENEMY : DUST — WAITE. 95 



A MUSEUM ENEMY— DUST. 



By Edgar R Waite, F.L.S. 



(Zoologist to the Australian Museum). 



Dust is an enemy we are always fighting; every day our 

 rooms are dusted (whether necessary or not !), and once a week, 

 may be, various cabinets containing choice china or other valuable 

 objects are cleared, their contents dusted and replaced. Taken 

 altogether the time occupied in dusting is by no means inconsider- 

 able ; to say nothing of the deterioration or danger of damaging 

 the articles of virtu so frequently handled. 



The principle demonstrated in this essay although thought-out 

 primarily for museum requirements, is alike applicable to general 

 and domestic purposes. 



Whilst at the Leeds Museum, I carried out some experiments 

 for Mr. T. Pridgin Teale, M.A., F.R.S., who, at the time, was 

 making observations on dust ; more especially with a view to 

 excluding it from cupboards, drawers, ifec. As the outcome 

 of these experiments, together with others conducted at his own 

 house and elsewhere, Mr. Teale read a paper before the Manchester 

 Meeting of the Museums Association, entitled — "Dust in Museum 

 Cases, how to battle with it."* 



The subject is so fraught with interest and importance to all 

 who are in any way connected with museums, that no apology is 

 needed for introducing a matter with which museum administrators 

 have so persistently to contend. It is usually the aim of those 

 who are responsible for the well being of a museum, to make 

 their cases dust-proof ; but as Mr. Teale points out, this, by all 

 ordinary methods, is impossible. Air is bound to pass in and out 

 of a case, and why % because the pressure is always changing ; the 

 barometer shows us this ; a rise of the mercury in the tube, indi- 

 cates that the pressure on our case has been largely increased, 

 and no workman, after these facts have been pointed out to him, 

 will continue to maintain that his fittings will resist a pressure 

 sufficient to burst in the plate glass front. As a matter of fact, 

 the instances are few where the maker claims anything approach- 

 ing to air-tightness. It will be the experience of most of us, that 

 all except the newest and most modern cases are the very reverse 

 of this. I have myself seen more cases than otherwise, through 

 the chinks of which one could blow out a lighted candle. 



* Report of Proceedings, 1892, pp. 81-86. 



