— 126 — 



with a series of early stages and a sufficient number of specimens to show 

 the variation will make an almost ideal collection. 



Private collections must largely remain the gatherers, therefore — the 

 Public Museum must be the conservator — the keeper and preserver of 

 the life labors of the student, the open record of work done, to be veri- 

 fied by subsequent workers in the same field. A place of resort for 

 students to see the material with which their predecessors worked, and 

 to remember in their greater knowledge, when they contemptuously cast 

 aside the earlier conclusions that but for these incomplete observations 

 their own results would not be so lull, and to coi.s dcr too that a future 

 generation will be apt to treat the present much as the present now treats 

 t!ie past. 



This does not mean at all that a museum should be unlv a record — 

 it should also seek in all wa\s to accummulate material and to become a 

 known and influential element in the progress of Science. 



In his able address to the Ent. Soc. of London. Dr. .''harp speaks 

 of die aims of public collections and emphasizes the fact of their being a 

 record. He prominently urges the fact that collections innv made are im- 

 portant and should be urged, as civilization, especially in Islands is en- 

 tirely changing the faunal condition, so that in a few years no trace of the 

 peculiarities now existing will be discoverable. No collector in the vicinity 

 of rapidly growing American cities can fail to be struck by Dr. Sharp's 

 arguments. He says that a single pair of goats on an Island previously un- 

 inhabited by them can change the entire fauna. I know that a herd of 

 cows introduced into my favorite collecting ground near Brooklyn, pro- 

 duced this effect in a single year, and within my experience the fauna of 

 the Western end of Long Island has undergone a complete change. 



The observations of Dr. Hamilton on this subject recorded some 

 vears smce in the Canadian Entomologist, strikingly illustrate the same 

 subject. 



The importance to a museum of acquiring intlividual collections 

 thus exemplified, local C(^llectors, even with but small collections, 

 should see to their deposit in a Museum to preserve in that way a record 

 of the fauna at a definite period. 



The curator of such an institution should be a working systematist, 

 and he will find his hands full in keeping his charge abreast of the tmies. 

 He should also be a specialist, able by his scientific work to inspire con- 

 fidence and attract material — in his own specialty at least, to render the 

 collection in his charge, pre-eminent — not however to the neglect of 

 branches outside of his specialty. 



There are several Institutions, but only two which seem to me to fill 

 all of the requisitions to invite deposit of collections, viz : the Museum of 



