and Laboratory Methods. 



•2601 



in different rooms of the same department the unit drawers may vary in size ; 

 but it is obvious a controlling advantage to be able to take out a drawer from 

 any part of a museum and find it fit the stacks in any other, even remote parts, 

 of the same museum. Such uniformity can, however, scarcely ever be thor- 

 oughly attained. 



As drawers will contain specimens in many departments. Mineralogy, Palaj- 

 ontology. Oology, Archaeology, which are placed away in paper trays, it will be 

 found very useful to establish an exact relation between the size of the drawer 

 and the size of these paper trays, so that the latter will, from back to front and 

 from side to side of the drawers, compactly fill the latter. This prevents shifting 

 and dislocation in pulling and pushing the drawers out or in. It is inadvisable 

 to use drawers under cases that do not fit closely together, and depend, for their 



Fig. 84. — Cases of iron fronted drawers. 



extrication, upon a space left between them. Such openings are only another 

 invitation to dust. Bring the drawers closely together and put a handle on each 

 drawer-front. As an additional protection to their contents, enclose a section of 

 drawers, under a table case, by two or one outer door, which shuts upon them, 

 and forms a sensible barrier to intrusion, whether inorganic or human. The 

 under drawers of fiat cases have already been shown in preceding figures. As a 

 protection to large stacks of drawers in storage, duplicate, or study rooms, the 

 drawers may be encased in iron boxes, and each drawer have an iron front. 

 Such stacks have been in use in the New York Museum (Fig. 84). Practically 

 this may not generally prove efficacious at all in the accident of any extended 

 conflagration, but it seems reasonable to expect from it some security in the case 

 of a local fire. The fronts of such drawer stacks can be readily washed, and 

 defacement by cutting, writing, etc., is impossible. When any stack of drawers, 



