they will be consulted in the selection of the curators, assistants^ 

 and collectors who shall work in their respective departments, and 

 will be regarded as forming the heads of departments of the scien- 

 tific staff. 



One of their first duties will be to prepare for the Institution a 

 full and comprehensive statement of the status of their specialty, 

 with reference to the Pacific Ocean. In their reports they will 

 treat as fully as circumstances will allow such subjects as the regions 

 in which collections have been made — regions from which no satis- 

 factory collections have been secured — the kind and quantity of 

 the material required; equipment necessary for the collecting, 

 storing, and study of the material ; a list of the important literature 

 deahng with their specialty in the region; the kind, quantity, and 

 form of field notes to be collected ; the lines along which investiga- 

 tion should be pursued; theories which require further or more 

 minute study afield or in the laboratories, etc. 



These theses will be collected, edited, and eventually published 

 to furnish the broad foundation on which the survey will be con- 

 ducted. Such a book will serve the young student as a touchstone; 

 and will be a guide to what has been accomplished in the past and 

 what yet remains to be done. It will be a source of inspiration, 

 tending to make the material, gathered from any source, in the 

 various groups, by various observers, take on a more even and 

 comparable character. 



SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY 



As has been intimated, perhaps none of the many subjects 

 which require immediate investigation in this vast region are of 

 greater importance than those with which ethnology deals. Hap- 

 hazard and promiscuously gathered specimens, regarded as mere 

 curios by the voyagers, have furnished a large proportion of the 

 ethnological material that has gravitated to our museums. With- 

 out data, often without labels, it has been assigned by different 

 workers to different islands, until its value, even as curios, has dis- 

 appeared. Yet such specimens are all faithfully guarded by mu- 

 seum custodians in the hope that competent and properly trained 

 ethnological explorers with modern methods may yet go afield and 



II 



