It Is A Sad Fact Of Life,

that in many museums only a tiny fraction of what they hold can be displayed,

 only when you see photographs like these taken by photographer Chip Clark, 

 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History can you even get a glimmer,

of what treasures museums like this one and many others around the world hold but cannot due to space and other reasons be displayed, it is estimated that at any one time only1% of the Institutes exhibits can be publicly displayed,

I was intrigued by this picture of seaweeds and was reminded of a headline I read a few years ago, 'When Housewives Were Seduced by Seaweed' it is true, in Victorian times ladies would in many countries would visit the seashore, collect and dry hundreds of specimens of seaweeds, recently a few of their collections have been found leading researchers to try and find out more about the collectors identities and lives, there are two more articles about mysterious collectors here and here, fascinating!