Dear Helmut,
don't take that so tragically! You can ask in Conch/L for everything, which
you need, - about help, piece of information, sending of comparison-samples,
about exchange-offers and of course also about material for the Tyroler
Landesmuseum at Innsbruck (Austria), that has no money for the purchase of
expensive species.
Whoever may donate nothing can ignore your request. And whom your requests
goes on the nerves, that needs not to open your e-mails. That is so simple.
Your requests about a few especially conspicuous and therefore normally to
exorbitant prices dealt shells for a museum are not impertinent. One must
see that of everything relatively. In the warehouses of less Philippine
dealers, such "Treasures of the sea" pile up for a world-wide distribution
by barrels. Kauris stores there like potato-mountains in shops and
backyards. Auger shells pour out of burst sacks. Even the protected Tritons
still pile up in the magazines meter-high. And the overexploitation at the
nature continues. While the mollusk-continuances have been destroyed in most
Philippine coral-reefs by poison- and dynamite-fishery, is collected all the
more eagerly in the few intact reefs. That some have been proclaimed
protectorates, apparently brakes nobody there. It must also be seen that the
big demand in some areas of the world improves the living of the there
living poor fisher-families.
If your request therefore reaches a commercial camp about a donation for the
museum, so it should not be difficult for the dealer to send a few nice
shells without calculation once. People, that don't own such a fullness,
must mention themselves feels. Of course, also these can do a good work, if
they hand over a shell brought earlier, that lies now unnoticed in their
wardrobe, maybe because their interest-direction has changed, at a museum.
The collecting of objects of the nature is from age-ago tradition. His
esteem is registered. Again and again, collections, were collected also by
amateurs, don't rarely form the basis of the holdings of museums and public
institutions today. It is not possible practical without the going back to a
carefully collected comparison-collection to acquire a profound knowledge in
the shells. It is a big advantage if that is possible in a home-like museum.
So it is seen you to credit high if you put for an expansion of the
mollusk-collection in your museum. You should not have yourself discouraged
from it.
To the end I have also a request at you, Helmut: Call not your participation
in Conch/L in question, if a louse runs you over the liver once again.
Best regards
Gert Lindner