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ETHICAL.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

XXIV. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE (Vox Clamantium,

1894).

432

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN VOL. II

PAGE

FIG.

1. MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

19

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14. SPADE AND KNIVES

46

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STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL

VOL. II

CHAPTER I

MUSEUMS FOR THE PEOPLE

MUSEUMS of Natural History should be, one would think, among the most entertaining and instructive of public exhibitions, since their object is to show us life-like restorations of all those wonderful and beautiful animals, the mere description of which in the pages of the traveller, the naturalist, or the sportsman, are of such absorbing interest. Strange to say, however, such is by no means generally the case; and these institutions rarely appear to yield either pleasure or information at all proportionate to their immense cost. We can hardly impute this failure to anything in the nature of museums or of their contents, when we remember that good illustrated works on natural history are universally interesting and instructive; and that private collections of birds, shells, or insects are often very attractive even to the uninitiated, and at the same time of the highest value to the student. We must therefore seek for an explanation of the anomaly in the system on which public museums are usually constituted, in the quality of the specimens they exhibit, and in the mode of exhibiting them, all which, it is now generally admitted, are equally unsuited for the amusement and instruction of the public and for the purposes of the scientific student.

VOL. II

B

Public museums of natural objects being such entirely modern institutions, we can hardly wonder that no generally accepted principles have yet been laid down for their construction or arrangement. They most frequently originated with private collectors, whose plan was naturally followed in their enlargement; and when they outgrew their original domicile, an architect was called in, who, according to his special tastes, designed a temple or a palace for their reception. However inconvenient or unsuitable the original mode of exhibition might turn out, or however ill adapted to its purpose the new building might prove, it would, of course, be exceedingly difficult and expensive to alter either of them, more especially as the modified plan might be found, after trial, to have defects as great as that which it replaced.

Two eminent naturalists, Sir Joseph Hooker and the late Dr. J. E. Gray, both connected with great public museums, have made suggestions towards a more rational system ; and as it is evident that museums will increase, and may be made an important agent in national education and the elevation of the masses of the people, it seems advisable that the subject should be brought forward for popular discussion.

Accepting as a basis the few essential principles that seem now to be agreed upon, I propose to follow them out into some rather important details.

I shall consider, in the first place, what should be the scope of a Typical Popular Museum, and then sketch out the arrangements best adapted to make it both entertaining and instructive to the young and ignorant, and a means of high intellectual culture and enjoyment to such as may be disposed to avail themselves fully of its teachings.

Museums are well adapted to illustrate all those branches of knowledge whose subject-matter consists mainly of definite movable and portable objects. The great group of the natural history sciences can scarcely be taught without them; while mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry make use of observatories and laboratories rather than museums. The fine and

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