22 



FIFTY YEARS OF MUSEUM WORK 



beginning with the London Fishery Exhibition of 1883 and ending— 

 so far as I was personally concerned — with the Louisiana Purchase 

 Exposition at St. Louis in 1904, offered unusual opportunities for experi- 

 ment on a large scale and for putting into practice many theories of 

 methods of display as well as for noting excellent examples of what 

 not to do. Also, for devising exhibits that would include desirable 

 specimens that, due to restrictions on the museum appropriations, 

 could not ordinarily be purchased. 



The change from working days of nine or ten hours, to which I had 

 been accustomed, to government hours (then 9 to 4) was most acceptable ; 

 it is always easier and pleasanter to decrease instead of increase one's 

 hours of work. But I have never regretted those long days at Ward's 

 and doubt if, under different conditions, my time would have been more 

 profitably employed than it was. 



At first it seemed as if the time might hang heavily on my hands in 

 spite of various things that I wished to do for nryself, but soon oppor- 

 tunities offered for making drawings for scientific papers and later on in 

 writing for cyclopedias, a line of work that culminated in taking part in 

 the revision of the Century Dictionary. Washington was, and for that 

 matter still is, an admirable place for such work, as its museums, libraries, 

 and scientific bureaus provide a combination of men and material not to 

 be found elsewhere, another important point being that the institutions 

 are readily accessible and within reach of one another. 



Some frivolous person is said to have remarked that he had a great 

 respect for encyclopasdias and dictionaries until he came to Washington 

 and met the men who wrote them, but be that as it may, Washington 

 furnished many of the editors of, or writers for, the Century, Standard 

 and Webster's Dictionaries, Johnson's Cyclopaedia, and the last edition 

 but one of the Britannica. 



At Washington, in connection with my work, I gradually made the 

 acquaintance of men like Coues, Dall, Gill, Howard, Ridgway and Riley, 

 men whose names are so intimately connected with the progress of 

 zoology in America. Later came the younger men, now, alas! no 

 longer young, though happily mostly still here: Merriam and those he 

 gathered round him; Fisher, Howell, Oberholser, Osgood, Palmer and 

 Richmond. To associate with such men was a liberal education in 

 itself, and no book learning, no training in the laboratory, can begin to 

 compare with the knowledge thus gained. 



To this might be added Alexander Graham Bell's pleasant and 

 profitable Wednesday evenings, for they not only gave the younger men 



