THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE. 



133 



The Making of a Museum Group. 



By Allax R. McCulloch. 



[Owing to the generosity of Messrs. A. E. and O. Phillips, Sir James Burns, 

 Sir Hugh and Air. William Dixson, the Trustees were able to despatch a party 

 from the Museum to Lord Howe Island to collect material for the construction of 

 three gallery exhibits. Mr. McCulloch was in charge, and was assisted by Mr. E. 

 L. Troughton. The taxidermy and casting, &c., were carried out by Messrs. G. 

 C. Glutton and W- Barnes, while Miss P. F. Clarke accompanied the party as 

 artist. The first exhibit, a nesting group of Boatswain Birds, has been con- 

 structed by Messrs. H. S. Grant and J. H. Wright, and is now almost ready for 

 exhibition. The following article gives an account of the field work entailed in its 

 preparation, together with soine notes on the habits of the birds themselves. — 

 Editor.] 



In days gone by, those good old days 

 we so often bear about but which were 

 really so bad in many things, a museum 

 consisted largely' of rows upon rows of 

 stuffed animals, and whole shelves of spe- 

 cimens in bottles of spirit. FeojDle wan- 

 dered in and looked them over in a more 

 or less aimless fashion, and most of them 

 went away again carrying nothing witli 

 tliem but a recollection of many dead 

 things. In novels one reads of fusty old 

 gentlemen in frayed coats whose interest 

 in the musty things of museum galleries 

 precluded them from the society of their 

 fellow men. That was the spirit of the 

 museum of days gone by. 



But the modern museum must be a place 

 of entertainment and education, the latter 

 presented in such a form tliat it is un- 

 wittingly assimilated by everybody. The 

 vagaries of nature, the relationship of 

 everything around us, changing moment- 

 arily and all the time, are what make up 

 the interests of our lives, and, whether we 

 know it or not, we are all deeply con- 

 cerned with everything nature has to show 

 us. And it is the business of a museum 

 to draw attention to, and so make us ap- 

 preciate these interests. So we no longer 

 arrange specimens in endless rows, but 

 endeavour to present them as they are 

 in nature, very imperfectly it is true, 

 but far more effectively than has been 

 done in the past. 



To bring a Boatswain Bird or two into 

 a museum is quite a simple matter. A 

 gun and a knowledge of taxidermy are 

 all that is required for that. And there 

 would be no ditticulty in arranging some 

 artificial rocks, decorating them with 

 ferns and bushes, and after stuffing the 



birds aiid mounting them in pretty posi- 

 tions, preparing a group that would look 

 quite effective. But would it be correct"? 

 W'ould it teach people something of 

 nature's ways, or would it mislead them 

 with fal.«e ideas, which is precisely what 

 we must not do? In order to represent 

 those same birds with all their vitality 

 and the air around them so as to show 

 people how they are in life, it is neces- 

 sary tliat we go into the field. Instead 

 of merely bringing them down with a gun, 

 we must climb up to their nests, to watch 

 their flight fi'om above as well as from 

 below, to make friends witli their babies, 

 and to .study tneir ways of living. And 

 we must not only have a taxidermist with 

 us to mount the birds in life-like attitudes, 

 but an artist also who can see and paint 

 the background, and so reproduce the at- 

 mosphere in which they live. The nature 

 of the cliffs on which they nest, and the 

 kind of bushes occurring thereon must 

 be carefully noted if the reconstruction 

 is to be really instructive, and just what 

 the birds do or don't do is to be carefully 

 observed so that the specimens may lie 

 properly associated in the group. 



It was with all these things in mind that 

 we set out early in the year for Lord 

 Howe Island. We selected Boatswain 

 Birds as the subject of our group for 

 several reasons, one of which was that 

 they are of such striking beauty that they 

 could be mounted into an effective group, 

 while they are also characteristic of a 

 large group of sea birds which build their 

 nests upon more or less inaccessible cliffs. 



W^e found the birds in plenty nesting 

 on all the seaAvai-d cliffs at anything from 

 fifty to a thousand feet above sea-level. 



