Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/527

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468 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

Museum in the Trocadero is very extensive, and as regards a few races is fairly complete and important. But the Trocadero is not adapted to museum purposes ; it is poorly lighted, and does not seem to be clean, while the cases are the poorest of any museum visited in Europe. There is also an ethnographical collec- tion in the Artillery Museum of the Hotel des Invalides. Here are many valuable implements, weapons, and pieces of armor from different parts of the world, but they, too, are treated as mere curiosities and are neither well labeled nor well mounted. In this museum there is a series of about forty plaster figures rep- resenting many races of men, each dressed in costume ; very few, if any, of these were made from life casts, but were sculptured from photographs and measurements. While presenting a rather attractive and interesting appearance, they are of little value for scientific study.

The ethnographical collections of Vienna, although not nearly so extensive as the archeological exhibits, are of pronounced value; they are scientifically classified, well arranged and cased, and carefully labeled. The collections from North America are meager, but many parts of South America, especially Brazil, are well represented. There are also good collections from the islands of the Pacific.

The Museum fur Volkerkunde, in Berlin, certainly contains the largest amount of ethnographical material to be found in any one museum in the world ; in fact, I am inclined to believe that it pos- sesses a greater number of specimens than any other two museums combined. There are few important areas on the earth from which it does not seem to have more or less complete collections. Probably it is weakest of all in North American ethnography. The great hindrance to study in this museum lies in the crowded condition of the cases. The plan of labeling and illustrating by means of photographs, and of supplementing labels with maps, charts, and diagrams, is most excellent ; but on account of the rapidity with which objects have been received by the museum,

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