No. 11.— Proceedings of the Annual Meeting , May 4, 1898. 
Report of the Curator, Alpheus Hyatt. 
For many years the Curator has been trying to arouse the Society 
to the need of making a united effort for a larger endowment to 
carry to fuller development what it has undertaken to do in the 
Museum. This year the needs are more pressing than ever, and it 
has finally come to a position where it must either increase or begin 
a process of retrogression. 
In my Annual Report, May, 1889, it was announced with great 
satisfaction that a Boston lady had generously offered to main¬ 
tain a guide in the Museum, to carry out the Curator’s plan of 
employing an educated man and a capable teacher who would 
give lectures in the Museum and make it an effective instrument 
of public instruction. At that time this had not been attempted 
in any other museum, and it was an effort to place this Museum 
on a high plane so far as actual public usefulness was concerned. 
It was also an interesting attempt to raise the post of guide to 
the level of a professional occupation. This experiment suc¬ 
ceeded under most trying circumstances, and finally, under Mr. 
Grabau, it has risen to a degree of usefulness that leaves no doubt 
of the future and opens new paths in the same direction. We can 
develop this indefinitely, and it will eventually make our Museum 
an instrument of instruction of the highest utility to the public, and 
materially help the Society in all its departments. Miss Harriet E. 
Freeman, the lady referred to, has conducted this department for 
nine years, and with admirable patience and at the expense of great 
personal inconvenience has enabled us to demonstrate what can be 
done. She has now announced with regret that circumstances 
will no longer permit her to continue the salary of the guide. If 
there is no one to take her place, and if there is not interest enough 
to raise the money to pay a moderate salary, the work of the last 
nine years and its results will be lost and the future prospects of 
the Museum materially diminished. 
Another department of the Museum has been placed in a similar 
position by the retirement of Mr. John Cummings. The active 
