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perishable nature stored in the work-rooms devoted to special 

 investigations that the cost of maintaining them may stagger 

 the most enthusiastic collector. 



Do the results justify such large expenditures? While we 

 recognize the importance of keeping intact the historical col- 

 lections, and take it for granted that this function is totally 

 distinct from that other function, which museums are supposed 

 to perform, of supplying special investigators materials for their 

 study, it seems to me, nowadays, unreasonable to expect this of 

 any museum. No naturalist who wishes to study fishes, except 

 as regards their synonymy, will expect to find in any establish- 

 ment, no matter what its resources may be, the necessary mate- 

 rials. He will be compelled to travel, to collect in the various 

 fish-markets of the world, and to study his material on the spot. 

 With the present facilities and the cost of travel, it would be far 

 cheaper for an institution to supply the specialist with the neces- 

 sary funds for such an investigation, if it be one of value and 

 interest, than to go on for years spending in salaries of assist- 

 ants, care of collections, interest on the cost of buildings, and 

 so forth, sums of money which, if distributed to their ultimate 

 object, would astonish the least prudent manager. Such accu- 

 mulations of historical material are far too costly. The same 

 sums spent in a different direction, in promoting original inves- 

 tigations in the field or in the laboratory, and in providing 

 means for the publication of such original research, would do 

 far more towards the promotion of natural history than our past 

 methods of expending our resources. 



There are stored in the cellars of the Museum immense col- 

 lections of Fishes and Reptiles which have never been of use to 

 any one except the assistants in charge of them. A very large 

 part of this material, collected and maintained at great expense, 

 ceases after a time to be of value for scientific purposes, and 

 every year we are obliged to throw away as absolutely worthless 

 a large number of specimens which cannot even be used up as 

 students' material. One of the rooms in the cellar is filled with 

 alcoholic Birds and Mammals, and with Vertebrate embryos, ma- 

 terial which has become in a great degree useless for the purpose 

 for which it was collected. The same may be said of the large 

 alcoholic collections of Mollusks and of Crustacea. The latter, 

 however, while perhaps not available for study, can hardly be 



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