A MUSEUM ENEMY: DUST — "WAITE. 
95 
A MUSEUM ENEMY — DUST. 
By Edgar R. Waite, E.L.S. 
(Zoologist to the Australian Museum). 
Dust is an enemy we are always fighting; every day our 
rooms are dusted (whether necessary or not !), and once a week, 
may be, various cabinets containing choice china or other valuable 
objects are cleared, their contents dusted and replaced. Taken 
altogether the time occupied in dusting is by no means inconsider- 
able ; to say nothing of the deterioration or danger of damaging 
the articles of virtu so frequently handled. 
The principle demonstrated in this essay although thought-out 
primarily for museum requirements, is alike applicable to general 
and domestic purposes. 
Whilst at the Leeds Museum, I carried out some experiments 
for Mr. T. Pridgin Teale, M.A., F.R.S., who, at the time, was 
making observations on dust ; more especially with a view to 
excluding it from cupboards, drawers, &c. As the outcome 
of these experiments, together with others conducted at his own 
house and elsewhere, Mr. Teale read a paper before the Manchester 
Meeting of the Museums Association, entitled — “Dust in Museum 
Cases, how to battle with it.”* 
The subject is so fraught with interest and importance to all 
who are in any way connected with museums, that no apology is 
needed for introducing a matter with which museum administrators 
have so persistently to contend. It is usually the aim of those 
who are responsible for the well being of a museum, to make 
their cases dust-proof ; but as Mr. Teale points out, this, by all 
ordinary methods, is impossible. Air is bound to pass in and out 
of a case, and why 'l because the pressure is always changing ; the 
barometer shows us this ; a rise of the mercury in the tube, indi- 
cates that the pressure on our case has been largely increased, 
and no workman, after these facts have been pointed out to him, 
will continue to maintain that his fittings will resist a pressure 
sufficient to burst in the plate glass front. As a matter of fact, 
the instances are few where the maker claims anything approach- 
ing to air-tightness. It will be the experience of most of us, that 
all except the newest and most modern cases are the very reverse 
of this. I have myself seen more cases than otherwise, through 
the chinks of which one could blow out a lighted candle. 
* Report of Proceedings, 1892, pp. 81-86. 
