powder. Except for rare specimens replaced by 

 pyrite, fossils do not pick up moisture from the 

 air. Fossils are not edible and though occasional 

 labels and locality numbers may be lost to 

 particularly desperate cockroaches or rats, such 

 events have been fairly rare. . . . Fossils do not 

 change color after years of storage, nor do they 

 smell. 



About the only obvious and painful drawback to 

 fossil storage is weight. The average collection of 

 fossils, microfossils excepted, is heavier than the 

 average collection of almost anything else in a 

 museum. One drawer, 28 inches by 22 inches, full 

 of particularly stony fossils . . . requires complete 

 attention during a moving operation. Drawers of 

 fossils can be stored to a height of 9 feet, but an 

 administrator before making a decision for high- 

 level storage, should be required to carry at least 

 one drawer to the floor. There is a general rule of 

 nature (Gumperson's Law) that the heaviest 

 drawers are always at the top; for any case over 5 

 feet high this may become hazardous. It is also 

 well known that museums that stack drawers 

 rather than place them in cases, keep a needed 

 specimen in the bottom drawer of a stack 

 (Saunders' Corollary)." 



The Saunders for whom the corollary is named came 

 to the Museum in 1948 and has been curating collec- 

 tions for the U.S. Geological Survey ever since. Harold 

 Saunders remembers the location of thousands of col- 

 lections and hundreds of birthdays; almost every one 

 of the old timers annually receives a birthday cigar or 

 box of Cracker Jack from Harold Saunders. Cleaning 

 and rearranging collections is a full-time job, and with- 

 out those who do it the Museum collections would be 

 in a sorry state. 



Collections have to be stored, and they have to be 

 stored in some meaningful way. A major preoccupation 

 of any museum is files to keep track of specimens. One 

 used to use a pen to write on the three-by-five-inch 

 cards kept in the shoebox (shoeboxes are free); later 

 the cards were typed. Today word processors produce 

 enormous sheaves of paper printing the same data — 

 that the camel-saddle rugs from Egypt are in aisle 3, 

 case 10, and those from Kuwait are in case 19. 



It was not very long after the new Museum opened 

 that the hallways on the third floor became the storage 

 area for a large part of the collections. By the time the 

 wings were built, there were collections in the offices, 

 in the halls, in the attics — and wherever there was space. 

 At one time there were some paleobotanical specimens 

 in the east attic, some in Stone Hall, some on the first 

 floor underneath exhibit cases, some stacked in the 

 corridor of- the east north range by the library, and 

 some in the former boiler room. Simply finding out 

 what was where, let alone getting one's hands on it, was 

 not easy. When the exhibits were modernized in the 



1950s and 1960s, the space between the new cases and 

 the windows was used for storage by almost every de- 

 partment; soon these areas were full. Ten years after 

 the wings were completed, space there was already at 

 a premium. 



Perhaps worst of all for storage are the three attics 

 of the main building, which can be entered from the 

 fourth floor of the rotunda or from a stairway in each 

 wing. Originally the east attic was for Geology, the west 

 attic for Biology, and the north attic for Anthropology, 

 but they all contained a bit of everything. Paul Garber 

 recalls finding Chinese kites from the Philadelphia Cen- 

 tennial. The attics were fantastically cold in the winter 

 and incredibly hot in the summer; a large fan at one 

 end of each attic provided only noise. The Old World 

 archeological collections contained a round-bottomed 

 pot in which some resin had solidified several thousand 

 years ago. The attic was so hot that the resin slowly 

 began to flow. Periodically Van Beek would roll the pot 

 around so the resin would not flow out; eventually a 

 stand was made to hold it upright. One need not explain 

 what such conditions did to wood and fibers. Since I960 

 the air conditioning has elevated working conditions 

 from inhuman to unpleasant. Because of the space they 

 provide, the attics are an important component of the 

 building, but no one ever goes to the fourth floor with 

 enthusiasm. 



Care of the Collections 



Care, along with storage and arrangement, is another 

 facet of curating collections. What constitutes proper 

 care depends on the kind of material being stored. 

 Those who study plants and animals have problems of 

 drying, evaporation of alcohol, and destruction by pests. 

 Those who study ethnographic material have even more 

 serious problems with deterioration. No collections, even 

 rocks and fossils, can simply be stuck in a drawer and 

 ignored; they all must be checked periodically. 



Every museum in the world has stories about the 

 technician who drank alcohol from specimens. Occa- 

 sionally these stories are true, but it is not clear whether 

 the Museum ever really had an alcoholic sharing the 

 preserving liquid with the fish and the invertebrates. 

 One time during the early 1930s, somebody experi- 

 mented with adding sugar to inhibit evaporation and 

 ended up with a few exploding jars. Newer jars and 

 better storage limit evaporation, but somebody still has 

 to "top off or replace the liquid in the wet collections 

 or the specimens will be ruined. 



Everyone is afraid of pests, and fumigation and poi- 

 soning of collections, now more sparingly prescribed, 

 were once carried out routinely. Harry Oberholser of 

 the Biological Survey had a favorite moth-eaten wool 

 shirt that he kept in a moth-infested office wardrobe 

 when he was not wearing it. Wetmore pleaded with 

 Oberholser to discard it because of the danger of moths 

 to the collections. Oberholser refused, but when he 



200 



The Museum 



