Peter H. Buck, Bishop Museum Visiting Professor to Yale University (1933)

In the vacation between two terms at Yale, I visited Europe to study the Polynesian material in museums, concentrating on a detailed examination of the priceless collection in the British Museum. With the cooperation of the late Captain J. A. Joyce and his staff in the ethnographical department, the various artifacts were removed from their cases, photographed with a Leica camera, and notes made on the technical details. The fine private collection of Captain A. W. F. Fuller was also studied in detail, and the unique collection of W. O. Oldman was examined. Visits were made to the Horniman Museum (Forest Hill), the Chiselhurst Museum (owned by the late H. G. Beasley), Pitt-Rivers Museum (Oxford), Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) and the museums at Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool. During a 20-day trip on the continent, the Polynesian collections were examined in the museums at Leipzig, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, Basle, Berne, Paris, and Boulogne. Just on a thousand photographs of Polynesian artifacts were taken, and these, with nu-page 62merous photographs taken in the United States at Salem, Cambridge, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, have been added to the Bishop Museum photograph catalog. For assistance in the project, I am under obligation to the National Research Council for a grant-in-aid.