1 
'E KING OF MUSEUM-BUILDERS. 
A TipicAL Collection 
whole of the Lewis Brooks Museum, of the 
University of Virginia, except the building, 
was taken bodily and at once out of the Roch- 
ester establishment, and scarcely made a hole 
in it ! 
When Marshall Field, of Chicago, gave his 
check for 1100.000 in exchange for the entire 
Ward collection at the World's Fair, a whole 
uiufeeam was bought and "located" in one 
day. 
Instead of being brought forth, as is cus- 
tomary, with great labor and travail, and 
working up in slow migery from nothin.^ to 
something, as do most new public museums, 
the grand new Field Columbian Museum, like 
the Lewis Brooks Museum, was born of full 
stature, lusty and proud, christened and con- 
firmed, all in one day. All this was made pos- 
sible by one man— and I wonder how many 
Chicagoans there are who know all the facts, 
or remember his name. 
In these days, the times require that every 
man shall have his special work, bounded, 
limited and confined. In science, no man now 
dares to attempt to know it all. He must spe- 
cialize within the fence that bounds his par- 
ticular bailiwick— the ethnologist on man, the 
mammalogist on mammals, the ornithologist on 
birds, theherpetologist on reptiles, and so forth 
and so on, ad infinitum, each after his own kind. 
Every professional nataralist is supposed to be 
either a teacher or an investigator, and to 
0. 
know literally all there is to be kcowu ^ 
his one poor little specialty. 
Know that Professor War^ belongs to neithe. 
of those classes of naturalists. Witli a fie*, 
scientific education, the inborn habit of inves- 
tigation, and a command of language— or I 
had better say languages-^-of which any teache r 
might well be proud, he€ !ectedto oarve out ' 
himself a special niche i the world and fill 
all alone . \ 
He deliberately chose , as his sphere of use- 
fulness the gathering anfl distributing of spe- 
cimens and collections for the promotion 
scientific study. The wmk of hi."! lifeJwifl bewo 
to place in the hands of evesy-^Wfentific stn 
dent and iavestigator the ^Bfects that be can 
not obtain for himself, and which dull meB 
cannot obtain for him. His life work bega^ 
in carrying an old trunk filled with fossils from 
the Paris Basin, across the English Channel, and 
selling its contents to the London museams foj 
a good round sum. Now, however, it require* 
twenty -one freight cars, jammed to the roof 
to transport such a collection as that which 
constituted the " Ward Exhibit " at the World 
Fair of glorious memory. 
In this hurrying, hustling age, nothing ap 
peals to the mind of the bpsy reader mon 
sharply than figures. We have almost reacheof 
the point when no description quite com 
plete, and no object is considered fully • ;4ze. 
up" without theni. Adjectives are compare 
