14 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



suitable restrictions. These often seem petty to the applicants, 

 but are the results of our experience as necessary for the safe- 

 keeping of the books and of the collections. 



I beg to call the attention of the Corporation to the precarious 

 situation of the Museum. We have been most fortunate during the 

 past twenty years in enlisting the support of Assistants who have 

 served the Museum for small salaries, or who have given their 

 services, from the interest they felt in its development, and on 

 account of the facilities for investigation afforded to them. It is 

 evident that, however satisfactory this may be to us at present, we 

 can hardly hope to depend upon this state of things as upon a 

 permanent organization. 



The time will come when the Curator must receive an adequate 

 compensation, and whenever we are obliged to pay our compar- 

 atively small staff for their whole time such salaries as are paid 

 at other institutions for similar work, our salary lists will have 

 to be greatly increased merely to carry on the organization of the 

 Museum as it now exists. If the Museum is hereafter to expect 

 a reduction of income as great as it has suffered during the past 

 year, a totally different scale of expenditures must be established 

 if we would keep within the limits of our resources. 



For the academic year 1894-95 our income has diminished fully 

 fifteen per cent, leaving us a sum totally inadequate for so large 

 an institution. We cannot hope to preserve the collections and 

 properly care for them with a smaller staff than we at present 

 employ for that purpose. We can only curtail our expenditures 

 by limiting our publications and the purchase of books, by with- 

 drawing all facilities now given for original research, and in fact 

 by stopping the wheels of everything which has given it its activity 

 in the past. Such a condition of things is greatly to be deplored ; 

 for it is very doubtful if the Museum could long retain the services 

 of skilled Assistants or of a competent Director after its scientific 

 usefulness was so seriously impaired by want of means. 



ALEXANDER AGASSIZ. 



Cambridge, October 1, 1895. 



