Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/157

Rh be addressed in all serious cases. The literature on this subject is scattered in the form of articles in Museumskunde, the Museums Journal and the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums. The most complete and authoritative handbook is that by Dr. Fr. Rathgen, "The Preservation of Antiquities," translated by George A. and Harold A. Auden and published by the Cambridge University Press, 1905.

.—Let us consider first the care of textiles, and primarily tapestries. Every woven fabric which contains wool is subject to the house-keeper's pest of moths. Exhaustive experiments, especially by scientists working with ethnographical material, have demonstrated that the ordinary moth balls or camphor balls are of absolutely no use. Cleanliness is most important. There is also a system of disinfection which is very useful. It is well known that the fumes of carbon disulphide kill all animal life and even destroy the germs in insect eggs. This substance is highly poisonous to human beings and is also excessively explosive. It has, however, no chemically deleterious effect upon color or upon the fabric itself. The problem is to subject the textiles to the fumes of carbon disulphide for a sufficient length of time to kill all insects or eggs without running the risk of fire and without poisoning the