FIFTY YEARS OF MUSEUM WORK 



15 



lived, and after a brief but extremely active existence of three years, it 

 succumbed to that most deadly disease, force of circumstances, and died. 

 But its purpose had been accomplished— men die, institutions pass out 

 of existence, but ideas live. And the stimulus given to what was most 

 literally the stuffing of animals, has resulted in such work as the beautiful 

 bird groups in the American Museum and elsewhere. 



As one of the results of the activities of the Society, Mr. Hornaday 

 was called to Washington to be Chief Taxidermist of the U. S. National 

 Museum, and a little later I followed as Osteologist and on June 1, 1882, 

 began the second period of my career, working in instead of for a Museum. 



1882-1904 



It was my good fortune to go to the U. S. National Museum at the 

 time it was beginning to occupy the building designed by General Meigs, 

 when the process of selection from the heterogeneous mass of material 

 received from the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 was going on, the 

 exhibits of the various departments commencing to take shape, and chaos 

 was giving way to mere confusion. It was then possible to try experi- 

 ments in installation and exhibition that would not have been feasible 

 in an older institution. 



The Museum had been used for the Garfield Inaugural Ball and for 

 some years the checking boxes put up in some of the courts made con- 

 venient storage places. 



While the museum building was very ugly and everywhere looks 

 had been sacrificed to economy of construction, so that it resembled 

 nothing so much as a huge car-barn, yet General Meigs had successfully 

 solved the problems given him in the way of light, exhibition space on 

 one floor and provision for offices. That there was not enough work- 

 room and storage space was not his fault nor the fault of anybody. 

 No one at that time realized to what proportions study series would 

 grow nor the great amount of preparation work that would be carried 

 on in large public museums. The taxidermists and other preparators 

 were accommodated in a large shed just outside the museum which also 

 contained a carpenter shop. Later another large shed was erected for 

 exposition work and still later a large part of the museum reserve collec- 

 tions and some of the workrooms were transferred to sheds and buildings 

 a quarter of a mile away, where by a special providence they were not 

 destroyed by fire. Few preparators today realize the wholly inadequate 

 quarters in which many of their predecessors have been housed, but even 

 today the need of space for the work of preparation is not recognized 



