664 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 933 



great museums which also have as a rule 

 se%'eral smaller lecture halls. As many as 

 seven or eight lectures may be held in such a 

 museum in one week, as for instance one for 

 the scientist, three in the afternoons for school 

 children, two in the evenings for the general 

 public, and other lectures for certain special 

 classes of people, as for instance those inter- 

 ested in breeding or sanitation. 



All the educational work of the museum 

 exhibits is not confined to the inside of a great 

 museum. Special cases of specimens are pre- 

 pared and sent out to schools, libraries and 

 other suitable places. Sometimes these are 

 loaned indefinitely but very often they are 

 loaned for a week and then moved to another 

 place. In New York this feature of the work 

 became so extensive that an automobile was 

 purchased to transport the collections from 

 the museum to the schools and from school to 

 school, so that thousands of children were 

 reached. This sort of work is somewhat akin 

 to the work of branch banks and traveling 

 libraries. 



Many of our people do not appreciate the 

 real use of a museum and we do not wonder 

 at it when we see the dusty, poorly arranged 

 collections in many museums where there are 

 few, if any, labels and the whole tends to dis- 

 gust, in fact to teach disorder rather than to 

 be pleasing, helpful or educative, but in an 

 up-to-date museum every day you may see 

 classes from kindergartens enthusiastically 

 examining specimens under the guidance of a 

 museum kindergartner. Frequently one may 

 see classes of bright high-school or college 

 Students on a visit to the museum halls, sup- 

 plementing their educational work by viewing 

 the actual things of which they study. They 

 may be guided by a curator. Thousands of 

 slum children in the greater cities are cheered, 

 educated and uplifted by being taken to the 

 museums by their teachers. One time when 

 a lecture was advertised for school children 

 by an enterprising newspaper which offered a 

 prize for the best essay on a certain subject, 

 over seven thousand children endeavored to 

 attend the lecture held in a hall seating only 



one thousand four hundred, but one of the 

 museum authorities sprang to his telephone 

 and in as many minutes had twelve of the 

 staff taking as many groups of the children 

 to various parts of the building where they 

 were entertained and instructed. 



A great educational museum is usually open 

 free to the public every day in the year so that 

 people engaged on certain days may have the 

 greatest possible opportunity to visit it for 

 recreation, education or research. On the 

 occasion of an exhibit for the prevention and 

 cure of tuberculosis, in one museum over forty 

 thousand visitors passed between the police 

 lines in and out of the exhibit in a single day, 

 which proved conclusively that the public is 

 thoroughly alive to the importance and value 

 of the most modern and useful museum work. 

 Harlan I. Smith 



Geological Survey op Canada 



TSE PROFESSIONAL WOBK OF 

 PBOFESSOB MOBSIS LOEB' 



Morris Loeb was a man in speaking of 

 whom I wish I might have had time to choose 

 my words with more deliberation. His nature 

 showed itself always in such a refinement as 

 to command its tracing only with the most 

 delicate touch. Tender is the wound in losing 

 a friend in science whom I had known for 

 nearly twenty years, — in fact, since the time 

 he was the secretary of the Section of Chem- 

 istry of the American Association at the 

 Brooklyn meeting. At that time he was par- 

 ticipating in the great task of habilitating the 

 American Chemical Society, with the history 

 of which no doubt all here are familiar. 



I wish I were able to fittingly tell you of the 

 spirit actuating him at that time, as it proved 

 an inspiration to me then, and afterwards 

 served to cement a friendship into a closer 

 personal relationship. 



Born and reared in wealth, a great plan in 

 the business world ready for his acceptance, 

 while gaining a broad culture at Harvard, he 

 inhaled the breath of Wolcott Gibbs's scien- 



* Presented at the October meeting of the New 

 York Section of the American Chemical Society. 



