6 Director's Annual Report. 
several hundred feet away for the Press, Taxidermy, Photography 
and everything else. So in the process of evolution we may attain 
even greater helps in our work. 
With no suitable workrooms, still less any adequate store- 
rooms at present, a condition of things which is I believe admitted 
by all the Trustees, the workers in the Museum cannot justly be 
blamed if they do not take active measures to increase the collec- 
tions when we have nowhere to prepare, exhibit or store them. 
When they have not sufficient room apart from the public exhibi- 
tion halls to unpack valuable collections already in possession; 
when they see valuable specimens fade away to worthlessness in 
the exhibition cases because they have no other place safe from 
insects in which to store them. 
And this brings me to the consideration of one of the most 
important objects for which this Museum was founded,—the fre- 
servation of the objects collected within its walls. We have taken 
several important steps in that direction: a durable and essen- 
tially fire-proof building; cases as insect- and dust-proof as they 
can be made; a free use of preservatives, poisons and insecticides. 
All this is well but not enough. Certain rare specimens should 
no longer be exposed to the intensely actinic light of this climate 
but be withdrawn from public exhibition and consequent expos- 
ure, and stored for study by another generation of scientists instead 
of being sacrificed to the idle curiosity or unheeding gaze of the 
average visitor. 
I had intended to place before you an analysis of what has 
been published by eminent museologists,—Drs. Flower, Goode, 
‘True and others on the side of work and store rooms, but our situ- 
ation in the midst of the Pacific is so peculiar that even the gener- 
ous allotment of work and store space by all these masters as 
distinct from the public exhibition halls of a museum, will hardly 
meet the wants of this Museum in a tropical climate, where work 
rooms must not be cramped and heated, and storage must be well 
aired and accessible. Our conditions are greatly variant from 
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