xvi Report on the Zoological Survey of India 



periodicals were purchased, 645 received in exchange and the remainder 

 presented. The additions show a fair increase— about 130 books — ■ 

 over the number added last year. Among noteworthy additions the 

 following may be mentioned : — 



1. A set of the first twelve volumes of the Connecticut 



Academy of Sciences for the years 1866 — 1907. 



2. Keports X— XXIII (1899—1915) of the Danish Biological 



Station at Copenhagen. 



3. A complete set of the Annals of the Genoa Museum, with 



the exception of the first volume, which is out of 

 print. 



4. Ten volumes of the journal of Economic Biology for the 



years 1905 — 1915, all that were published. This work 

 is being continued as the " Journal of Zoological 

 Eesearch." 



Museum Galleries. 



We are often asked why we do not put up vernacular labels 

 in the Museum galleries. But in which vernacular ? Over twenty 

 languages are spoken by the visitors to the Museum. And what 

 is the use of a label in any vernacular to a man totally illiterate in 

 all, as over 90 per cent, of our visitors are believed to be ? Never- 

 theless, the question, though put without thought, suggests a much 

 more searching one. Why do we not arrange the galleries of the 

 Indian Museum in a manner suitable for India ? Because neither 

 staff nor money is available. Personally, after ten years' practical 

 study of the problems involved, I should like to see both the 

 Zoological and the Ethnological galleries entirely cleaned out, 

 refitted in a much more simple and more dignified style ; to make 

 them above all things an example of order and cleanliness, reduce 

 the number of exhibits and instead of labelling specimens with 

 labels which few of the visitors can read and fewer still understand, 

 provide a number of neat and intelligent persons, who were interested 

 themselves, to explain the exhibits in the different vernaculars. 

 I hesitate to suggest what this would cost, for in India the price 

 of chaste simplicity is above that of rubies. The number of 

 educated people — I do not include students ^ learning labels by 

 rote for examination purposes — who visit the Museum is almost 

 infinitesimal, and unless Calcutta experiences an intellectual revival 

 of which no signs are apparent, must always remain extremely 

 small, as compared with that of ignorant and illiterate persons to 

 whom its educational message must be entirely subconcious if not 

 delivered verbally. We have been striving for years to bring the 

 galleries of the Indian Museum up to the level of those of a 

 municipal museum in one of the larger English provincial towns. 



1 There is less necessity for medical students to make use of the Muv'ttm now 

 that teaching conections are available elsewhere in Calcutta. 



