Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/171

Rh The museum curator only a few years since was satisfied to gather and arrange his research collections with very little reference to their source or to the conditions under which they were obtained. In fact it is surprising to find how little information is on record in regard to collections contained in certain eastern institutions as accessioned previous to about 1885. The modern method, and the one adopted and being carried out more and more in detail by our California museum, is to make the record of each individual acquired, whether it comes in from an outside donor or whether, as is the most usual case, it is secured by the trained museum collector, as complete a history as practicable.

The field collector is supplied with a separate-leaf note-book. He writes his records on the day of observation with carbon ink, on one side of the paper only. The floral surroundings are recorded, especially with respect to their bearing on the animal secured. The behavior of the animal is described and everything else which is thought by the collector to be of use in the study of the species is put on record at the time the observations are made in the field. The camera is as important a part of his outfit as the trap or gun. These field notes and photographs are filed so as to be as readily accessible to the student in the museum as are the specimens themselves.

Furthermore, a rather elaborate system of card cataloguing is maintained in the museum. Three sets of cards, namely, accession, department and reference, which are kept up as a part of the regular work of the curators, enable the enquirer to determine quickly what material is on hand, in what form it is, when and where obtained, and, by following up the cross references to the field note-books, the conditions under which each animal was obtained.

As a matter of routine, each specimen as it is obtained in the field is at once tagged, the label being inscribed in India ink with the exact place of capture, date, collector and field number. The original field number is the same as that under which the animal is at the same time recorded in the field notes. Its original tag is never detached from the specimen, no matter what disposition is made of the latter in arranging the collections in the museum; and so, reversely, the student may quickly trace back again from any particular specimen its history, by referring to the card catalogue and field note-book. In addition to the original collector's number there is added on each label a separate department number by which it is referred to in the museum records and any published articles specifically mentioning it.

It will be observed, then, that our efforts are not merely to accumulate as great a mass of animal remains as possible. On the contrary, we are expending even more time than would be required for the collection of the specimens alone, in rendering what we do obtain as