CANTERBURY MUSEUM

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1912, Page 3

CANTERBURY MUSEUM

THE WOOD-BORER. RE-ARRANGEMENT OF INTERESTING EXHIBITS. [B* TIXKGBAPH— SPECIAL TO THX POST.") CHRISTCHURCH, This Day." Mr. E. R. Waite, curator of the Canterbury Museum, and members of the museum . staff were busy yesterday taking up the floor of the gallery of the New Zealand room. The boards are white pine, and they have been completely riddled by the destructive borer. The timber is simply a mass of soft pulp, and there is hardly a board through which a man could not thrust his fist. The joists have been attacked in the same way, and the insect has worked its way into the framework of the cases used for exhibits, besides getting into the laths used for the lath J and plaster walls. The gallery, which is reached by a staircase from the New Zealand room, contains specimens of the Dominion's reptiles, fishes, inverte brates, and geological collections. These have not been arranged in scientific sequence further than the geological collections being placed on the western side of the ( gallery, and the natural history collections _on the east side. On the northern side there are a number of moa hones, and bones of other extinct New Zealand birds. In the work of renovation it will be necessary to move several thousand specimens. They will have to be treated with great care, as they will have to be returned to their proper places when the work is finished. An immense kauri board has hung on the southern wall of the gallery for many years. It has been taken down, and yesterday Mr. Waite was busy superintending the work of placing in position the iron supports for the cast of the tooth strapped whale which was washed ashore at Allandale, in Lyttelton harbour, some months ago. The cast will hang on the wall at the head of the staircase. It is an excellent position for the cast, which will be a conspicuous object from the ground floor of tne room, as well as from all parts of the gallery. Mr. E. J. Haymes, taxidermist at the museum, is now at work on the cast with chisel and sandpaper, smoothing the surface and bringing into proper prominence tHe strong characteristics of that species of whale — such as the peculiar strap-like tooth growing out of one jaw into the other. When this has been completed, the cast will bo painted black. It will then be ready for exhibition, and Mr. Waite and his assistants will have to face the task of hoisting it into position — a work that will require much ingenuity and patience. While repairs to the gallery are in hand, tho New Zealand room, the Maori house, and the whole shed (containing the gigantic' skeleton from Okarito) win be closed to the public. Additions to the collection in the museum this week include eggs of the king penguin, the rock hopper penguin, the royal penguin, and the Macquarie Island shag, collected by Mr. Waite when ho was with the Aurora on her recent miis© to the BubAntarctic Islands.