NOVEMBEE 15, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



661 



these does a particular share of the work 

 which he is perhaps the only man able to do. 

 The artist may be brought thousands of miles 

 because of his ability to paint just the right 

 kind of background. The museum expert is 

 skUlful in writing labels which may be under- 

 stood not only by the scientist, who often 

 knows all the facts without any label, but also 

 by the people who do not know the facts and 

 consequently need information. Such a man 

 should write the label. 



In a great research museum there are al- 

 ways thousands of specimens in the store- 

 rooms and laboratories kept for study and 

 research ; that is, they are used for the increase 

 of human knowledge. To expose them to the 

 light and dust of exhibition might destroy 

 them while duplicate specimens, pictures, easts 

 and models may serve equally well or even 

 better for educating the public. 



All great museums have brains, in other 

 words they have a staff of experts who perhaps 

 are not seen in the exhibition halls, but who 

 find out the new knowledge which the people 

 are always anxious to have, who plan the work, 

 write the labels and guide-books, give the lec- 

 tures, direct the field explorations and so keep 

 the museum from ever being dead and dusty. 

 One of the great museum men of the world 

 once said that a finished museum was a dead 

 museum, and this well expresses the idea that 

 there is no such thing as a finished museum, 

 for scientists are always making new discov- 

 eries which lead them to add new exhibits and 

 rearrange old ones. There is always a great 

 deal of work going on in the workshops, of 

 which the visitors to the exhibition halls have 

 little idea. This work can not be done by 

 untrained men, but must be accomplished by 

 artisans, mechanics and artists who have had 

 very special training each in his own par- 

 ticular line. Sometimes in a country of mil- 

 lions of inhabitants there is no man trained 

 in a certain special kind of work so that a 

 museum often has to send across the sea or 

 to some equally far-away place for a skilled 

 mechanic. Even Japanese, Eskimos and In- 

 dians are employed in one of our largest 



museums. Many days' and sometimes months' 

 work must be done — not by one man but by 

 seven or eight men, each doing his own kind 

 of work in the most expert way — ^to produce 

 an exhibit from which the public may learn in 

 a few moments what has taken all this time 

 to produce. Then too one must not forget 

 that to get some material by means of which 

 new knowledge is found out, and by means 

 of which this knowledge is diffused to all the 

 world, hardy men must penetrate into the 

 uttermost wilds of the earth, endure the bitter 

 cold of the Arctic and the dangers of the 

 tropical forest. 



Some museums have many friends, for in- 

 stance for years the Barnum and Bailey circus 

 had all of its rare animals which died on the 

 road embalmed or otherwise preserved and 

 sent to one of the museums in New York 

 City. Then, too, wealthy men vie with each 

 other in giving funds for expeditions, re- 

 search, scientific books, exhibits, teaching 

 labels and guide-books, and for lecture courses 

 in connection with these museums. Sometimes 

 they endow a branch of museum work or an 

 entire museum. Some men have each given 

 more than a million dollars for such purposes 

 and this is one of the indications of the value 

 of a museum, for men capable of amassing 

 millions do not endow institutions which they 

 consider valueless. 



Sometimes models teach quite as much as 

 actual specimens. A model of a mosquito 

 made many times larger than the insect itself 

 shows us how to cope with malarial fever and 

 yellow fever. We could not see the means by 

 which the mosquito transmitted these diseases 

 by looking at the mosquito herself, but the 

 scientist in his laboratory with his microscope 

 may find out all these things, make accurate 

 plans and drawings of the various parts of the 

 insect, and leave it to skilled mechanics to 

 spend many months in reproducing them ac- 

 curately on a large scale. Such work is not 

 an extravagance when we consider that if the 

 doctors and the people learn to avoid yellow 

 fever and malaria the life insurance com- 

 panies do not have to pay so much life in- 



