2 BRIG HAM ON HAWAIIAN FEATHER WORK. 



As in the case of Vancouver's official collections made fourteen years after the visit 

 of Cook, these were lost in the Government warehouses; so little was the intelligent inter- 

 est in Ethnology awakened at that time. Let us remember also that when Cook's reliquce 

 reached England they were sold at auction and scattered; some of the choicest finding 

 after many years, a worthy resting place in the Anthropologisch-ethnographische 

 Abteilung des K. K. Hofmuseum in Vienna. Some of these have been already illus- 

 trated in the publications of this Museum through the kindness of Dr. Franz Heger 

 the learned Director." But the time at last came to bring to light the grateful offering 

 of the survivors of the Cook expedition. I do not know the circumstances of the dis- 

 covery, nor are they important, but my attention was called to it by a Russian visitor 

 to this Museum, Vladimir Svjatlovskij, Professor in the Petrograd University. When 

 at last my opportunity came to visit Petrograd it may well be supposed that the Impera- 

 torskaja Akademija naiik was not the least attraction. The Russian Imperial Academy 

 is perhaps the most extensively organized in the world, for besides having scientific 

 activities extending all over the vast Russian Empire (we cannot yet call it Republic), 

 it has six distinct and remarkable museums in the capital, and of these the Anthro- 

 pological-Ethnological of Peter the Great contained the precious relics. It is not always 

 a great advantage to be a corresponding member of a foreign academy, but here it was 

 (although the great courtesy found everywhere in Russia might have answered the pur- 

 pose), but Dr. Wilhelm Radloff the Director, whose name was on my diploma, seemed 

 to give me a most hearty welcome, and opening the cases containing the treasures put 

 them at our service, and my Secretary Clarence M. Wilson and I went speedily to work 

 examining first the feather work, of which the results are of interest here, and then the 

 other often remarkable objects not only from the Hawaiian Islands, but from all the islands 

 visited on the voyage of Cook. As we were promised photographs of the important 

 specimens we did not make sketches, but contented ourselves with a careful examina- 

 tion. These photographs are used to illustrate this collection in this treatise. 



In the dispersal of the collections of Cook part were purchased as curiosities for 

 what were then called museums, or by private bidders who appreciated the artistic if 

 not the scientific value of the beautiful specimens that have seldom, if ever, been sur- 

 passed by the subsequent collections from the same localities. From these private 

 holders in course of time, as the growing science of Anthropology claimed room for itself 

 in the Government museums, came as solitary specimens or more extensive collections, 

 for the shelter, care and exhibition so difficult, when in private houses, the scattered 



"curiosities". 



While moth and rust corrupted in very ancient times, it seems to those in charge 

 of modern museums that these destroyers of historical relics have been "gathering their 

 clans" and become, as the years roll on, greater forces of destruction, until the museum 



'Occasional Papers, Vol. I, Plates III-IV. Memoirs I, fig. 20, p. 30, 



