Apeil 30, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



681 



belonged to some person with a lengthy 

 name, or to have been described by some 

 pottering genius of the locality, or, perhaps, 

 merely to have been presented by some in- 

 dividual, who, because his name was utterly 

 unknown, desired to adopt this method of 

 bringing it into prominence, and laid it 

 down in his will that his specimens were 

 to be known for all eternity as the ' Peter 

 Smith Collection.' This method, at all 

 events, places an insuperable bar in the 

 way of our associating specimens that the 

 student wishes to compare, and enables us 

 to hide from the gaze of the traveling man 

 of science specimens of historic interest 

 that he may have come to our museum on 

 purpose to see. Permit me here to indulge 

 in a fragment of autobiography. Many 

 years ago I journeyed to Strassburg on 

 purpose to examine certain specimens that 

 had been described by Mr. de Loriol. The 

 various curators whom I met at the mu- 

 seum assisted me very willingly through- 

 out three days searching for these speci- 

 mens, but they could not be found, and I 

 went on my way sorrowing. Arrived at 

 Freiburg, I mentioned the fact to my friend, 

 Professor Steinmann, who suggested that 

 possibly the specimens might have been over- 

 looked as being in the Cartier collection. At 

 considerable expense and inconvenience I, 

 therefore, returned to Strassburg, and, sure 

 enough, there were the specimens carefully 

 obscured. I have known instances of emi- 

 nent foreigners coming to a great museum 

 in our own country, desirous of inspecting 

 certain remarkable specimens, and, after 

 searching for many hours in the cases, 

 where all logic would lead one to imagine 

 the specimens were, learning at last that 

 they were at the other end of the museum 

 because they had once belonged to some 

 vainglorious amateur, or been described 

 by some muddle-headed genius of the dark 

 ages. Who, after this, can say that such a 

 system is not to be encouraged ? 



Somewhat akin to the distribution of 

 specimens among various collections, and 

 equally efficacious as a skid on the wheels 

 of science, is the practice that still obtains 

 in the majority of our museums of separa- 

 ting recent and fossil forms. It is necessary 

 that I should say some words about this, 

 because there are in this and other countries 

 certain people who strongly urge the amal- 

 gamation of these collections, coming out 

 with such absurd dicta as that one specimen 

 should not be separated from another be- 

 cause it happens to be preserved in stone 

 instead of in spirits, maintaining that the 

 evolution of life and the relations of the 

 present to the past are far more easily seen 

 if one has not to walk several hundred yards 

 to see the living ally of a fossil species. 

 They also believe that the zoologists are 

 led into errors through their ignorance of 

 extinct animals, an ignorance largely 

 fostered by the museum custom of keeping 

 them apart ; and they deny that the 

 paleontologist can properly understand the 

 fossils with which he deals so long as he is 

 prevented by the assumed necessities of 

 museum arrangement from studying living 

 forms pari passu. An intimate friend of my 

 own, who happens to be officially connected 

 with one of our greatest scientific establish- 

 ments, has privately complained to me that 

 his studies found yet another difficulty in 

 the fact that the books which are sup- 

 posed to deal with modern life are placed 

 in two or three separate rooms at a con- 

 siderable distance both from one another, 

 and from the room that contains the books 

 dealing with extinct life. Nor is this all. 

 He adds that, when the necessities of the 

 case compel him, as they often do, to visit 

 one of the other libraries, he is actually 

 scowled at as an intruder by his fellow- 

 workers in that department. It is clear that 

 in the institution to which my friend has 

 the honor to belong the true museum-spirit 

 is still flourishing with vigor. It is this 



