light is completely excluded. Direct sunlight must never be permitted to fall upon an 

 egg, even momentarily. Exposures to diffused light must be brief and calculated. Dis- 

 play collections, show-case material in the popular sense, are not to be thought of, unless 

 one is prepared to sacrifice the material itself in a brief time. 



This fundamental requirement, the briefest possible exposure to light, necessitates 

 an instant departure from the ordinary conception of a museum as a place where things 

 are placed on view. It profoundly modifies museum practice. An oological museum is 

 not a place where the crowds can surge through and amuse themselves. All inspection 

 by visitors at the M. C. O. must be under guidance. Parties and small groups, rather 

 than crowds, must be welcomed at the museum doors, and each group allowed to enter 

 must be provided with an escort or guide, who shall be able to open and display, and 

 promptly close, all cabinets as the party moves forward. 



In like manner, eggs must be preserved from dust, from displacement, and from 

 the ravages of insects. This necessitates not only unusual precaution in cabinet build- 

 ing, but constant attention and supervision on the part of curators. There are, also, 

 other, obscurer, factors connected with the preservation of eggs for a long period of 

 years. There is' a well recognized fungus enemy, Penicillium, to guard against. The 

 effects of humidity, or the lack of it, heat or cold, or sudden changes of temperature — 

 these require special study (although we may say at once that Santa Barbara's climate 

 is demonstrably ideal in these respects). 



The larger problems of preservation include those of adequate housing. Over- 

 crowding is the bane of museums; and in many otherwise successful institutions much 

 valuable material is relegated to cold storage for lack of room. The Museum of Com- 

 parative Oology expects, by means of its flexible unit system of construction, to escape 

 these pangs. Having no obligation to provide shelter for undesirable material, it will 

 scrap or exchange all excess; while the build-as-we-grow program will prevent unwel- 

 come jams, with attendant confusion and loss of values. 



But, after all, the real function which the public is interested in, is the function of 

 use. What will be done with this special material when we get it? and for whom and 

 for what is all this housing preparation? 



The functions of use, in turn, are three-fold. There is the function of display or 

 entertainment. There is the function of research or scientific contemplation. And 

 there is the function of instruction or explanation. And, again, these three are one in 

 effect, even if it pleases our present purpose to consider them separately. For what 

 scientist would contemplate birds' eggs unless he were entertained thereby? And how 

 should we instruct the young, unless we had first learned through research? Or, lastly, 

 who would pretend to be entertained unless there was sound meat of wisdom in it all? 

 unless display was orderly and meant something? 



The first function, then, of the M. C. O. is entertainment. People are naturally 

 interested in the ways of birds; and the products of avian activities, whether in nests 

 or eggs, are of intrinsic interest to the public. There need be no argument for this. 

 It is self-evidencing. If the painted oval of a thrasher's egg has attractiveness because 

 of its beauty, eggs tinted, or clouded, or marbled with a thousand patterns of color are 

 a thousand times more beautiful and interesting. And when to the interest of beauty 

 is added that of ingenuity, of skill, of resource, as illustrated by a bird's nest,, a multi- 

 plication of examples adds interest more than a thousand fold. It is manifestly worth 

 while to exploit this natural, wholesome, human interest to the utmost, to provide for. 

 it a comprehensive, a monumental sphere of activity. 



But add to this, again, discernment of design in nature, — a vindication of order 

 where at first sight is caprice and chaos, and the pleasurable sensations of even the most 

 casual visitor, are increased many fold. To realize this order is delightful. To follow 

 nature's reasoning is pleasurable. To do this with the minimum of effort and the 

 maximum of material is entertainment par excellence. 



The M. C. O. intends, frankly, to become a show-place, a place of resort for 

 pleasure-seekers, a quiet, wholesome influence in leisure lives, a pleasant resting place 

 and a diversion for the overwrought. This is the primal function of any museum, and 

 to fail here is to forfeit any right to go further. 



But if we should stop here, we would not have gone] very far. There would be 

 little to differentiate the M. C. O. from a thousand other collections of birds' eggs. 

 The serious function of the M. C. O. is research — research in a field boundless in oppor- 

 tunity, because the thing has never been attempted in a large, thoroughgoing lashion; 



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