Science: Modern Noahs

They are packing up their Egyptian mummies and stowing them away in dark vaults. They are dismantling their dinosaur skeletons and hiding them again in the earth. They are locking dead cockroaches in safes. They have rented a bank to safeguard their Indian wampum. In all the great science museums along the U.S. coasts, curators are busy as Noahs, threatened by the flood of war.

In Washington the Smithsonian Institution is shipping 57,200 insects to a secret cache. Why all the fuss over a tattered bug on a rusty pin? Or a frowsy bird skin? A pickled fish? Because these are the type specimens—the original catches from which the species was first scientifically described and defined. Like the platinum-iridium bar in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sèvres on which the meter is engraved, each specimen is the standard against which other members of the species and new varieties are measured.

A new insect pest, for example, must first be compared and classified before it can be efficiently combated. Evolutionary changes, which only careful comparison can verify, have appeared in some species since the type specimen was first chosen, a century or two ago. And, though any curator can catch a Musca domestica (or housefly) in his own soup, he would probably give his right ear to have the original type. Among other items selected for bomb-sheltering from the Smithsonian collection (valued at $300,000,000 but irreplaceable, says one of its officers, at three times that figure):

> Specimens of such extinct creatures as the great auk, the Labrador duck, the sea mink; and the only Townsend’s bunting (a bird) ever found in hand or in bush.

> The jade Tuxtla statuette from Mexico, earliest (98 B.C.) dated monument of the New World.

> The first patented typewriter and the first letter written on it; remains of Morse’s telegraph and Bell’s telephone; the log of the Savannah, first steamship to cross the Atlantic.

> The original star-spangled banner which inspired Anthem-Writer Francis Scott Key in 1814.

Most of the big dinosaurs will have to risk staying in Washington; so will many another object. It would be too heroic a task to bottle, bundle, crate and ship even a large fraction of the Smithsonian’s 1,000,000 fish, its 1,750,000 plants, its 510,000 historical relics. (Only 5% of this material is displayed for the museum’s 2,500,000 yearly visitors.) A Smithsonian zoologist last week estimated that the alcohol required to preserve the chosen animals for the duration would be enough to provide the entire Japanese army with a 24-hour spree.

Manhattan’s great American Museum of Natural History has rented a bank in an unnamed inland spot to store its choicer small fossils, a collection of rare Brazilian birds, type specimens of a pygmy elephant, a West African crocodile, etc. The Museum’s dinosaur collection, world’s best, is not being hurried to safety. “The dinosaurs have already withstood a 200,000,000 year blackout,” said a fossil expert, “and they ought to survive the war. Besides, if they are bombed, it might be fun putting them back together again.”

The Brooklyn Museum is packing each item of its great Egyptian archeological collection—from tiny scarabs to half-ton granite statues—in jeweler’s batting, sealing it with gummed tape, laying it in excelsior in a box, then in more excelsior in a wooden crate, which is again packed and boxed. Inca and other ancient textiles too fragile for shipment are being packed and stored within the museum.

Like most museums, the New York Botanical Garden refuses to name its hideaway, lest passionate amateur collectors burgle its treasures. Its 50,000 type specimens include plants gathered by the Lewis & Clarke Expedition, by Explorer John C. Frémont (first Republican candidate for President), the first surveyors of the U.S.-Mexican border.

But at least 95% of science museums’ collections will remain in their museums throughout the war. Curators were busy last week at other jobs than warehousing: Smithsonian scientists, for example, were prospecting for metals in Mexico, devising instruments for the Navy, doing other tasks which were as secret as their bombproof caches.