262 Report of a Journey Around the JJ'or/d. 



group full of life and instruclion. Now we all know that these 

 groups are expensive, and there are some trustees of museums, 

 even if the number be small, who have never seen flamingos asso- 

 ciated with their nests and breeding surroundings as in the admir- 

 able group in the American Museum, or cranes wading in the 

 marshes as in the group just added to the Field Museum in Chicago, 

 or breeding on a "Bird Island" as in the Laysan Island group in 

 the Bishop Museum : and these hard business men reckon the cost, 

 without perhaps balancing the instruction, or. if you choose, merely 

 pleasure. They are right, for there are many departments calling 

 for "food" and they must make their limited funds cover as much 

 of the slice as possible even if the butter is very thin! Now this 

 outside help comes in and saves their consciences. In another 

 case a special fund is raised ior exploring, another expensive thing 

 beyond the means of a small museum. And there are many other 

 ways in which people of means can do a good work : a case in point 

 comes to mind — the beautiful glass models of flowers and fruits in 

 the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Mass. 

 In our own museum visitors are sometimes pleased and ask what 

 they can do to help on the good w'ork, and it is well to be ready 

 with suggestions suited to both person and query. I have found 

 these very productive. 



Most museums publish in their annual report a financial state- 

 ment which is often of use as well as interest to other museums, 

 although the methods of accounting are various. For instance one 

 museum reports : — 



Salaries 596,939.42 



Guard service 13,283.23 



Janitor senice 7'377-i4 



Heat and \\\i.\\\. waives 4,009.66 



while the smaller museums seldom make the distinction between 

 salary and wage. One has a section of printing and photography, 

 and classes engraving under general expenses, while the next puts 

 photography, engraving as well as binding with the printing 

 account. These are minor matters and it is generally possible to 

 get such results as one is looking for. In a large city the library 

 expenses bear a much smaller proportion to other expenditures 



than thev must in a museum situated far from anv reference 



[410] 



