Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-09-18

"a tors of the National Museum be-
Il neve. comes desire to con-
tribute q curiosity or freak to
the national collections
Many succumb to this desire-some from
the exaggerated idea of the worth Of their
curious possessions, and some merely to
see their names in the catalogues.
Whatever may be the reason. the fact
remains that the National Museum. whose
new building at 10th and B streets north
west is fast being filled with the extern
sive exhibits OF the government. and all
of the other larger museums Of the cOun-
try. are constantly in receipt of freak Of
fers.
Arrowheads, four-legged chickens, two
headed snakes, two-tailed lizards. pigs
with one body. two tails. two heads and
eight legs: strange stones suspected by
the would-be donor of being the petrifled
lung of an Ichthyosaurus, and all manner
of strange and unaccountable freaks from
the world Of mammals and from the
realms of geological research are offered.
One hundred dollars is the standard Of
price asked by most Of the owners Of
freaks for their curiosities. This. consid-
ering that even II the museum wished
such freaks they are comparatively COM
mon. is greatly exaggerated value.
"A typical case came up not long ago
said the acting curator OF the department
of biology of the National Museum, in
speaking of the freaks which are offered
to them
"a physician in a little town on the
Mississippi river wrote to us. saying that
he was shipping what he believed to be
part of the vertebrae Of a sea serpent
which had wandered in from the Gulf of
Mexico, died In the fresh water Of the
Mississippi and whose body had been
washed ashore
1.-THE exhibit when seen appeared to be .
jointed bone. held together by cartilage,
and was some eighteen inches or two feet
in length. No sooner had one Of our ex-
perts seen it than he Immediately identi-
fed it as the breast bone OF a mule. We
wrote to the physician and told him what
his curiosity was. The physician re-
piled. asking what sort OF whisky the
government experts drank
''You see. little incident like that Will
make many enemies for an institution.
And yet what can be done? Once year
the museum will receive a letter Oner1ng
really not so uncommon. but is seldom
found, for the reason that freak of
this sort rarely lives for any time at all.
a breaking or splitting of the egg is
usually responsible for such freak.
Now q two-headed turtle, by reason
of it's rarity is really curiosity. but
even II it were offered to the museum
there is no fund which can be drawn
upon promiscuously for It's purchase
/ believe that the museum did have such
a specimen a few years ago. There are
any number of albino species offered,
under the belief that they are an entire
ly new species to themselves, and In this
way the museum is offered albtno sQuir-
rels and things of that sort. What the
seums Of the world seek is not freakish
curiosities but natural ones.
"Of course, there are some freaks which
have been artificially produced that have
become species unto themselves Take.
for instance, the Japanese goldfish. Split
tails, double tails. hooded heads. red
fish blotched with black, are all common
enough In this species. But they were
originally artificially produced. l believe
that the Japanese produce these freaks
by shaking the spawn of the fish. How
they produce the freakish colors I do not
recall. You have also seen the dwarf
pine trees of Japan, which. at the age of
forty or fifty years. will be gnarled and
no more than five or six feet in. height.
This is produced by cutting the slips OF
normal pine trees and binding them with
wire. so that they cannot expand and
grow.
THE two-tailed lizard Is common. This
freak comes from the natural ability of
these reptiles to re-create missing parts.
Should the tail of a lizard become broken
another will grow. Should the tail be
only partly broken of. another may grow
from the broken part, making what many
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