Report of a Journey Around the World . 257 



instruction of adult visitors in general exhibits gathered from many 

 parts of the world and claiming tribute from the plastic and pic- 

 torial arts of civilized as well as of uncivilized peoples, like the 

 Canterbury Museum at Christchurch, New Zealand, for example, 

 out of man}- others where the separation cannot be economically 

 made into museums of art, of ethnology, of natural history ; it is 

 established "as a scientific institution for collecting, preserving, 

 storing and exhibiting specimens of Polynesian and Kindred 

 Antiquities, Ethnology and Natural History, and books treat- 

 ing of, and pictures illustrating the same, and for the examina- 

 tion, investigation, treatment and study of said specimens, and 

 the publication of pictures thereof, and of the results of such in- 

 vestigation and study." x 



Peculiarly situated on an island surrounded by other islands 

 in an ocean of vast extent, but inhabited by two or three races 

 who have by migrations accidental or intentional become more 

 or less mixed, and whose life-histories, so far as known, are much 

 alike, its work has been to study these peoples more or less 

 allied to its own Hawaiian race. To study means much more 

 than merely the collection, preservation and exhibition of the his- 

 tory and products of a now unfortunately vanishing people. We 

 have done the first so far as the Hawaiian group is concerned, 

 until our collection of implements and products surpasses all others: 

 as do our collections of native birds, fishes, land-shells, corals and 

 plants. Of Hawaiian insects the British Museum has a more 

 extensive collection than ours at present. Nor have we confined 

 our labors to the Hawaiian group ; all Polynesia and indeed all 

 the Pacific indigenes are necessarily comprised within our horizon 

 so closely are their blood, religion and methods intermixed and 

 interdependent. Next to the Bishop Museum the British Museum 

 has the most complete collection of Hawaiian ethnological material, 

 and third comes Berlin, with Copenhagen and Sydney following 

 at a distance, and beyond these are no Hawaiian museum collec- 

 tions of importance. We should be glad to make our collections 

 of the rest of the Pacific groups as complete as that of Hawaii, 

 but while this can never be we are still striving. For the intelli- 



1 Deed of Trust establishing the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 1896. 



Occasional Papers B. P. B. M. Vol. V, No. 5 — 17. 



[405] 



