192 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



local schools, and the present time is especially favorable for starting this 

 new branch of our activity. But it will be noticed that all of these sug- 

 gestions involve the expenditure of private rather than public funds, even 

 though they inure to. public profit. We are, in fact, confronted with this 

 difficulty in almost every effort to develop the museum ; and it serves to 

 emphasize the fact that a small endowment fund, to which I have often 

 alluded in reports and addresses before this Association as a desirable 

 thing, has now become an urgent necessity. Other institutions have started 

 their endowment funds before obtaining municipal support; we were 

 given quarters by the city, a budget appropriation, and a special allotment 

 for equipment. Our appropriation has now been more than doubled, a 

 house has been leased exclusively for our use, and there is talk of the 

 erection of a new fire-proof building when the lease expires. Yet the 

 Association has not a dollar invested as a museum fund, and its own 

 annual income is required almost entirely for its publications and ordi- 

 nary running expenses. The museum should have four funds, not because 

 they are theoretically desirable, but because they are absolutely necessary 

 for our successful development along the lines of the policy already 

 adopted by the Association. One is the library fund, to which reference 

 lias already been made. Another is the lecture fund, to enable us to give 

 weekly lectures for the school children throughout the fall, winter, and 

 spring. There should be a fund for the purchase of specimens required 

 for special exhibits, not easily obtainable in the field; and finally there 

 should be a research fund, wherewith the expense of collecting trips could 

 be defrayed, and by which members of the staff might be enabled to visit 

 other institutions occasionally in order to name collections, study methods 

 of preparing exhibits, etc. The annual income for these four funds need 

 not be large; it is probable that for our immediate needs, five hundred 

 dollars would be sufficient, representing an investment of ten or twelve 

 thousand dollars. The method of raising an endowment is entirely within 

 the province of the Board to determine. But it should be borne in mind 

 that as a rule, such funds are obtained by numerous small subscriptions 

 rather than by a few large ones ; and this emphasizes the importance of 

 advertising our museum in every possible way, and by making its work 

 known not only on Staten Island but elsewhere. The history of a suc- 

 cessful museum is a record of constant endeavor ; and the results achieved 

 by some of our smaller institutions, with only modest means at their 

 command, have been entirely satisfactory to those who by their gifts have 

 made these results possible. 



Respectfully submitted, 



Charles Louis Pollard, 

 Curator-m-chief. 



