CARE OF A COLLECTION 



87 



quiet, — they do not like to be disturbed at their meals. So they 

 rarely effect permanent lodgment in a collection that is constantly 

 handled, though the doors stand open for hours daily. As a con- 

 sequence, the degree of our diligence in studying birdskins is likely 

 to become the measure of our success in preserving them. I once 

 read a work, by an eminent divine, on the Moral Uses of Dwrh 

 Things, under which head the author included every dark thing from 

 earthquakes to mosquitoes. If there be a moral use in the " dark 

 thing" that museum pests certainly are to us, we have it here. 

 The very bugs urge on our work. 



Fig. 13.— Alexandek Wilson's School-house, hear Gray's Feeey, Philadelphia, U.S.A. 

 From a drawing by M. S. Weaver, Oct. 22, 1841, received by BUiot Cones, February IStS, from 

 Malviiia"Lawson, daughter of Alexander Lawson, Wilson's engraver. See article in tliePen«. 

 MontMy, June 1879, p. 443. The drawing was first engraved on wood, and published, by 

 Thomas Meehan, in the Gardener's MonMy, August 1880, p. 248. The present impression is 

 from an elec1;rotype of that woodcut. The size of the original is 5-10x3"95 inches. This re- 

 minder of early days of "Field Ornithology" in America maybe further attested by the 

 signature of 



