Report of a Journey Aroioid the World. 267 



This is not the place to suggest plans for the best utilization 

 of the collections now in museums or with private collectors, but 

 it might be well if the curators into whose hands these pages ma^^ 

 come will consider, with their own collection as a text, how to get 

 from their material the best results for science. 



It would be well if a census of all the contents of ethnographic 

 museums could be taken ; covering not merely the small but inter- 

 esting region the writer of this report has endeavored to cover, 

 although unsuccessfully, but the whole world of ethnography. 

 This is perhaps a too ambitious project. The printed lists of all 

 the important colle(5tions, to which could be added annually all 

 new acquisitions, would be a useful reference for all workers, but 

 the labor would be greater than the majority of museums could 

 undertake, and it would be wiser to make a more modest beginning. 

 From what I have seen of the principal museums of the world, it 

 w^ould be quite within the range of possibility for every one to 

 make the census of all specimens relating to say Polynesia, in its 

 possession with perhaps photographs of any rare or otherwise re- 

 markable specimens. This museum could well undertake the 

 work of bringing together all these, and also all that is known by 

 the reports of early voyagers, and if this proved a help to ethnog- 

 raphy, the method could be extended to other regions from other 

 convenient centres. Such a census would show the strangely 

 unbalanced nature of most of the collections and might result in 

 desirable exchanges. One museum may have fort^^ clubs of one 

 pattern, and a dozen door-posts with hardly anything else from the 

 same group ; another may have not one of these clubs or door-posts 

 but much of the other manufactures of the group ; will it not be 

 for the advantage of both to exchange? 



The work would help in the farther study of the many problems 

 affecting the past history of the islanders, and disclose, perchance, 

 more of the relationship between the two great continents to the 

 East and to the West. With the permission of the Trustees of 

 this museum I shall later issue circulars to all the museums of 

 which I have the address, asking for opinions on the project, and 

 for the needed help in case the majority of museums should approve. 

 The work cannot be done bv anv one or anv dozen museums, it 



' [415J 



