682 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. V. No. 122. 



spirit, this idea of separation, of privacy, 

 and, as it were, personal property, to which 

 the Greeks appropriately applied the term 

 idiwffti — it is this that we curators must con- 

 tinue to foster, if we are seriously desirous 

 of retarding science. 



To carry on the ISia iStwrr/.a : a Museum 

 should keep itself to itself; it has nothing 

 to do with the Free Library, with the Uni- 

 versity, or with the Zoological Gardens. 

 Do you wish to be overpowered by a lot of 

 rowdy students coming and pawing over 

 your specimens; or do you, as a peace-lov- 

 ing curator, wish to be dragged off to give 

 an opinion upon some new accession of an 

 animal that is possibly dangerous? Re- 

 member, too, that by this cooperation your 

 collections are likely to be increased to an 

 unmanageable extent and your hours of la- 

 bor will be lengthened without a corre- 

 sponding rise in salary. 



This leads me to consider an exceedingly 

 difficult question — the lending-out of speci- 

 mens. It is, as you are aware, the rule of 

 the British Museum never to let a single 

 specimen that has once been i-egistered pass 

 outside its walls, except as a donation or an 

 exchange. Other museums are either, as you 

 may prefer to term it, less careful or less mi- 

 serly. There can be no doubt that science is 

 greatly advanced when a reliable investiga- 

 tor, work ing in one locality, is able to borrow 

 from the museums of other cities or of 

 other countries specimens that will aid his 

 labors. On the other hand, there is this 

 to be said in favor of the proceeding : that 

 in a large number of cases the specimens 

 that are thus loaned never return to the 

 museum, and ultimately are lost to science. 

 It therefore does not very much matter, so 

 long as, if you lend them, you conveniently 

 forget whither they have been sent, and so 

 long as, if you keep them, you place the 

 necessary obstacles in the way of the in- 

 vestigator. 



But it may be retorted to the last argu- 



ment : there is another way whereby these 

 difficulties are avoided and science greatly 

 advanced. Videlicet, one museum can ex- 

 change type- specimens or special collections 

 with another. Such a solution of the prob- 

 lem was laid before us at Dublin by Dr. H. 

 O. Forbes. Now, on this question of the 

 dispersal of types, a conversation that I 

 had with a leading English entomologist 

 impressed me forcibly. Kew species of 

 insects, he said, are being described at the 

 rate of about 6,000 per annum. Those who 

 attempt to coordinate the scattered descrip- 

 tions cannot possibly do so without com- 

 paring the type-specimens. Experience 

 shows it to be impossible for even an ex- 

 pert to draw up a description that shall be 

 accepted as recognizable by another expert. 

 Further, no entomologist of ordinary human 

 powers can retain in his memory the con- 

 ception of any one species, much less of 

 three or four hundred, sufficiently well for 

 him to compare specimens in one museum 

 with those in another, unless he can set 

 them side by side. For any real advance 

 in this subject, the type-specimens of all the 

 species of a family must be gathered to- 

 gether in one room, so that the specialist 

 may examine and compare them directly. 

 This could be done, either by the various 

 type-specimens being lent for some time to 

 another museum, or by a permanent inter- 

 change of specimens — one museum special- 

 izing in Hymenoptera, another in Diptera, 

 and so on. The difficulties are felt most 

 strongly in entomology, but they affect 

 ornithology, botany, conchology, and other 

 branches of systematic biology to a marked 

 extent. Obviously, then, we have it in our 

 power to retard the advance of these 

 sciences, or even to check it altogether, by 

 jealously guarding our treasures, either for- 

 bidding them to leave their abodes under 

 any circumstances whatever, or cleaving to 

 our type-specimens as to some musty but 

 sacred heirloom, useful only to aliens, but 



