November 15, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



663 



dust and careless handling. Some of these 

 collections which are never seen by the public, 

 unless they ask to visit the storage rooms, are 

 vast in extent. In a great museum they may 

 be of more value and consist of a larger num- 

 ber of specimens than is found in all the mu- 

 seums put together in a region as large as 

 Canada and the states west of the Mississippi. 

 These collections are of course placed as close 

 together as it is possible to have them and yet 

 be able to get at them for research and for 

 use in illustrating truths to visitors. 



When an expedition goes out from a great 

 museum and learns something new, the facts 

 are published in reports which are ofttimes 

 illustrated. This is partly because a single 

 manuscript giving the facts might be burned 

 or lost. These reports are then sent to per- 

 haps a hundred different libraries widely scat- 

 tered so that they may be available as nearly 

 as possible to all the people of the world. 

 That is, they should be found in such places 

 as London, St. Petersburg, Tokio and Mel- 

 bourne. It is from such reports that the 

 writers of encyclopedias, text-books and maga- 

 zine articles secure the knowledge which is 

 finally the common property of all. 



A great educational museum always has a 

 library from which its publications are sent 

 out and in which anybody may read works 

 on the subjects covered by the museum. One 

 of the great uses for the museum library is 

 that the staii may always inform itself, for it 

 would not be economical to send an expedi- 

 tion to gather facts about a place if all those 

 facts could be read from books. 



After the return of an expedition and after 

 its reports have been published the specimens 

 are put on exhibition together with labels, such 

 a report, popular guide-books, maps, pho- 

 tographs and pictures. Sometimes the results 

 are illustrated by models. Lectures are given 

 to scientific colleagues, to highly educated 

 people, to children, and to the general public, 

 each lecture being made as far as possible 

 appropriate to the audience. The reports con- 

 tain all the facts, many of which are uninter- 

 esting to the public to-day but which would 

 be lost unless published and which may some 



day be of such great value that they deserve 

 to be saved. These reports are sometimes 

 placed with the exhibits for the use of those 

 who wish to read them, but more often ex- 

 tracts of the more useful and interesting parts 

 are made and published as guide-books for all 

 the people. In some museums such guide- 

 books are given to the public, but as certain 

 classes of people throw them away or destroy 

 them, other museums prefer to charge a small 

 sum for guides. This charge may be less than 

 the cost of the book. 



A few museums allow space for special and 

 temporary exhibits and in this way become a 

 sort of headquarters for all kinds of educa- 

 tional expositions such as flower shows, and 

 exhibits illustrating the advance in the fight 

 against the great white plague, expositions of 

 modern sanitary methods and horticultural 

 exhibits. Then too some of the great mu- 

 seums serve as centers for scientific and edu- 

 cational meetings, the large lecture hall being 

 particularly appropriate for general meetings, 

 and the smaller rooms for special societies. 



The photographs taken on expeditions are 

 kept in files or in scrapbooks where they may 

 be consulted and copies are given out in small 

 numbers free of cost or in large quantities for 

 the actual cost of the photographs without 

 regard to the expense of the expedition neces- 

 sary to secure them. These are given to 

 scientists for study and for illustrating their 

 books. They are given to educators to use as 

 illustrations and to hold up before their classes. 

 Many of them are used by magazine writers 

 and newspaper men for illustrations and by 

 sculptors and painters. In this way the ex- 

 plorer brings back glimpses of far-away lands 

 which eventually are shared with people un- 

 able to travel or who must travel nearer home. 



Vast collections of lantern slides are also 

 maintained in some of the great museums. 

 These are used to illustrate scientific, educa- 

 tional, or entertaining lectures both in the 

 museum and elsewhere. Moving pictures are 

 also occasionally used. 



A large lecture hall seating over one thou- 

 sand people is a useful feature of some of the 



