Director' s Anmcal Report. 5 



stud}^ and examine specimens undisturbed hy the public. When 

 funds are available this should be the first work undertaken. 



And now let us see what the exhibition side of this Museum 

 amounts to. For some )'ears careful statistics have been kept of 

 the visitors and the}- have been classed, not hy intelligence, but by 

 nationalities, and these lists, which have been published in the 

 annual reports, show increase in numbers from year to year until 

 the past year, as maj^ be seen by the table given below, the visitors 

 numbered more than 13,000 Whites, Hawaiians, Chinese, Japan- 

 ese and Negroes. The Museum is at present open free two days 

 in the week, and passengers on the through steamers are admitted 

 on closed days by special permit. It is instrudlive to compare 

 this attendance, so far as numbers go, with that of some of the 

 larger museums of which we have statistics. The Field Columbian 

 Museum in Chicago is open every day in the week ; five of them 

 are pay days (25c) and two are free : on the latter the attendance 

 averages sixteen times that on the pay days. The museum is a 

 large one, covering four acres, and could contain the Bishop 

 Museum in one of its large halls ; it includes in its exhibits articles 

 from all over the world and in nearly every department of human 

 knowledge, while the Bishop Museum is limited to the Ethnology 

 and Natural History of the Pacific Ocean, and j^et one in three of 

 the population of Honolulu visits the Bishop Museum annually, 

 while only one in six of the population of Chicago visits the Field 

 Museum. The American Museum in New York, probably the 

 best arranged museum of Natural History in the world, is visited 

 by one in eight or nine of the city population. I am aware that 

 we seem to neglect the non-residents, but in New York, where the 

 influx of travelers is greatest the attendance is least in proportion 

 to the population : in Honolulu, where there are comparatively 

 few tourists, the proportional attendance is greatest. It would 

 seem then that ive do more here for the public than either of these 

 far greater museums, and we make no charge as in the case of the 



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