A morning with Mr. Worcester at the Bureau of Science was most delightful. This bureau is so much more than a museum of scientific specimens that I cannot begin to do justice to it in a single paragraph. It was started at first as a Bureau of Government Laboratories in charge of the chemical and biological work of the government, the departments of zoölogical and botanical research were subsequently added, and finally the Bureau of Ethnology and the Bureau of Mines were incorporated with it. Not only were all these departments coördinated under one head, preventing overlapping and securing economy and efficiency of administration, but this work was correlated with that of the Philippine General Hospital and the College of Medicine and Surgery. When this comprehensive plan was formed all the scientific work of the government was carried on in "a hot little shack," and the scheme was commonly referred to as "Worcester's Dream," but at the time of our visit the dream had come true. The departments were manned by thoroughly trained men from the States, and the Bureau of Science was one of the world's greatest scientific institutions.
The Philippine Bureau of Science "is now dead." When the Democratic Administration took charge it was announced that all theoretical departments, such as ethnology, botany, ornithology, photography and entomology (!) were to be "reduced or eliminated." It was afterward made plain that all work which was considered practical would be continued, but the mischief had been done, the men who made the institution had left, and under present conditions it is impossible to secure others who are equally competent in their place. Our only consolation is to be derived, as Mr. Worcester himself says, "from contemplating the fact that pendulums swing."
Though so recently established, the museum contained in 1910 a wonderful exhibit of the plants and animals of the Islands. We took a peep into the butterfly room, where we admired some rare and lovely ones with a feathery velvet sheen the colour of the sea. We saw also the huge brown Atlas moth touched with coral, like a cashmere shawl, with eyes of mother-of-pearl on his wings. We noticed that the females were larger than the males, and even those of the same variety often differed greatly in colour. In one case a female was big, and brown and violet in colour, while her mate was small, and blue and yellow.
In the next room were beetles, some of which were like the matrix of turquoise, and others had shimmering, changeable shades of green and bronze. There were beetles like small turtles, and long, horned beetles like miniature carabaos.
Afterward we visited the birds. Bright-coloured sun birds, with long beaks, which feed on the honey of flowers; clever tailor birds, small and brown, with green heads and gray breasts, which sew leaves together with vegetable fiber to make their nests; birds of whose nests the Chinese make their famous soup, and the blue kingfishers, of whose brilliant feathers these same Chinese make jewelry; fire-breasted birds, too, and five-coloured birds. There were birds that build their nest four feet or more under the ground, and hornbills, that wall up their wives in holes in the trees while they are hatching their eggs, the males bringing them food and dropping it through a small opening. There, too, I saw the fairy bluebird.
Near by, we visited an orchid garden, and passed under gates and bamboo trellises dripping with every kind of orchid. The Philippines are the paradise of these remarkable plants, and many are the adventures that collectors of them have had in the interior of these Islands.
Then we passed into the Jesuit chapel and museum. We were greeted at the door by several black-robed priests, who smiled and bowed and talked all at once. They escorted us first to the museum, where there were cases of shells—heart-shaped shells, trumpet shells, scalloped shells big enough for a bathtub—all kinds of shells, and the paper nautilus, which is not a shell but an egg case. Then there were land shells, polished red and green, Venus' flower baskets, exquisite glass sponges, corals of all kinds—fine branches of the red and the white—and an enormous turtle that weighed fifteen hundred pounds.
In the cases at the side of the room were animals of the country—flying monkeys, with sucking pads on their toes to help them climb the trees, big, furry bats and flying lizards. A tiny buffalo, which was discovered only a few years ago up in the hills, and a small spotted deer were in the collection. A big monkey-catching eagle, white and brown, was here, and the paroquet that carries leaves for her nest in her red tail, as well as a pigeon with ruffs of green and blue about her neck, and a bald crown, which was caused, the natives say, by flying so high that her head hit the sky.
Numerous entertainments and receptions were crowded into that too short visit to Manila. July 25th had been declared a national holiday. A musical program was given in honour of the Secretary by five thousand Manila school children. One afternoon Mrs. Dickinson received some of the Filipina ladies, who sang and played on the piano quite well.
Another day the officers and ladies at Fort McKinley entertained the party at luncheon at the Officers' Club. Before luncheon there was a military review in which the troops from all over the islands participated, followed by some good shell firing out in the chaparral, as under war conditions, and a display of wireless work. A special drill was given by Captain Tom Anderson—the son of General Anderson—whose company was one of the best drilled in the army, and went through the manual and marching with only one order given, counting to themselves in silence the whole seventeen hundred counts, all in perfect unison.[12]