December 39, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



873 



equally interesting topics. One constantly 

 reads good papers on experimental work, 

 ■which suffer from the almost total ignorance 

 of the authors concerning the variability and 

 different specific characters of the genera they 

 are dealing with. Not only could much that is 

 valuable be obtained from the literature, but 

 the museums are full of materials which on 

 examination would yield a rich harvest. 



Dr. Wallace was greatly impressed with the 

 waste of opportunity in our museums, and not 

 very long ago (Sept. 30, 1909) wrote urging 

 that something should be done. 



If you can find time I wish you would write to 

 "Nature" — or if at more length to the "Fort- 

 nightly Eeview" — on a matter of great impor- 

 tance to the philosophical study of biology. Our 

 vast accumulations of plants at Kew, and of in- 

 sects at the Natural History Museum contain a 

 mass of most valuable geographical and statistical 

 information, quite lost, ixseless and unknown, 

 owing to the absurd system of devoting all the 

 time and energies of the staff of curators, etc., to 

 describing new species or small groups here and 

 there, or publishing a few enormous and very 

 costly works like Sharpe 's Catalogue of Birds, 

 — which, though intrinsically of great value, are 

 lost to the mass of workers owing to cost and 

 bulk. Thiseltou-Dyar wrote me lately that he 

 "groans over the masses of material which lie use- 

 less and unknown at Kew." I have urged the 

 last and present Directors of the Natural History 

 Museum to devote their influence to making a 

 simple Catalogue of the Museum contents, be- 

 ginning with the richest and most popular families 

 or sub-orders of insects — Longicorns, Carabidae, 

 Cieindelidae, Lamellicornes, etc., also Diurnal 

 Lepidoptera. This catalogue or list, could be 

 made by intelligent clerks only, by going over the 

 cabinets or eases, in systematic order, and enter- 

 ing every specific name (or sp. nov.) and the 

 numiers of the specimens in the Museum from 

 each separate locality. The clerk or clerks would 

 be under the general supervision of the Curator of 

 the special department. From this manuscript 

 list, a card-catalogue should be set up and stereo- 

 typed; there being a card for each species and 

 named variety, and in the case of all wide- 

 spread species, separate cards for each Continent 

 or each considerable Country. By printing several 

 sets of these cards, a card-catalogue for any sub- 

 family or genus, or for any geographical region 



or country, could be made up at a low price, and 

 would be invaluable to all private collectors, as tell- 

 ing them at once what is in the B. M., and tuhere 

 from, while the number of specimens would be 

 some guide to the abundance or rarity of the spe- 

 cies. I am immensely impressed with the value of 

 the plan of Card Catalogues, so much used in 

 America, but I suppose almost unknown here ex- 

 cept for Libraries. I have no time or strength to 

 go into this subject properly. . . . 



Dr. Wallace had not seen some of the more 

 recently published works, in which such infor- 

 mation as he desired had actually been given; 

 but it was and is true that all large museums 

 might do much more for the advancement of 

 biological science, were they to fully utilize 

 the materials at their command. The greatest 

 objection to catalogues compiled in the manner 

 suggested is that the determinations of speci- 

 mens are frequently unreliable, so that expert 

 revision of the several groups would be neces- 

 sary in the first place. This means more cura- 

 tors, and therefore more expense. It is however 

 a very wasteful policy, which would wreck any 

 private business, to keep up a large museum at 

 enormous cost, and then cut oft' the funds at the 

 point of providing an adequate staff to take 

 care of the contents. It is as though a large 

 department store were furnished with every- 

 thing except enough clerks and salesmen to at- 

 tend to the cvistomers. Several curators of the 

 U. S. National Museum, to whom I put the 

 question, concurred in the opinion that 5 per 

 cent, added to the total cost of running the 

 museum, put into expert curators, would 

 double the scientific output. In addition to 

 taxonomic workers, museums ought also to 

 have men with broad interests like those of Dr. 

 Wallace, whose business it would be to survey 

 and expound the facts relating to geographical 

 distribution, variation, etc., obtainable from 

 the collections. Thus at the British Museum, 

 Hampson's great work on the moths of the 

 world might be made the basis for many inter- 

 esting generalizations, which would interest 

 and instruct many who could not obtain or 

 read the original severely taxonomic volumes. 



In October, 1890, after I had returned to 

 England, Dr. Wallace wrote that he was about 



