Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/391

Rh supplied with books on American history, but wanting many in every department; or an archæological cabinet able to show all that can be shown of the flint implements of the United States, but little else besides, is of a higher order than one in which there are more and varied specimens, but every class incomplete. What thoroughness is to the intellect, completeness is to a museum; one, an adequate knowledge of whatever the mind professes specially to occupy itself with, its parts and its relations; the other, the possession of all the types, sorts, and varieties in fullness, or books, that go to make up one or more classes. If this view is correct, its practical acceptance may be insisted upon; for, if incorporated into a museum undertaking, not as a theory but what should be realized, it would, by keeping before it a definite and fixed aim, steady and direct effort into proper channels of activity, and check hap-hazard collecting.

It is the part of prudence to aim not at what may be theoretically desirable or best, but at what is practicable. How feeble are the resources, present and prospective, of any Western museum actually existing or likely to be formed; how totally inadequate to extended work; how hopeless the prospect of their large increase! On the other hand, how numerous are the specimens in any one division of the objects of which a museum may be the repository; how considerable is the expense of bringing them together and of their preservation! An archæological or a natural history collection, with its building and equipments, moderately furnished with specimens, and including its library, would probably represent a money value of hundreds of thousands of dollars; were either supplied with all that it properly includes, its real value would be deemed fabulous. What hope is there in these Western countries that an institution which attempted to cover the whole field of archæology, or of natural history, would ever be much more than a very incomplete affair? And, if special museums are practically fettered by such limitations, how much more general museums! Therefore, it appears to me that no museum should attempt to be more than a limited museum.

Besides limiting the scope of a museum, whether it includes several of the classes of objects that may find a place in its collections or not, some subdivision of a class should be made a specialty; for, unless this be done, there is little likelihood of the museum ever possessing a department which will be complete. How immense, for instance, is the number of individual objects necessary to represent, by a single specimen, each of its kind, the animal kingdom, with its six sub-kingdoms, their subdivisions, classes, orders, species, and varieties, already known, from the dawn of animal life down to our own day, besides species and varieties yet to be discovered! It were useless to compute what the formation of a complete natural history collection involves. Under circumstances far more favorable than any Western museum is likely to find itself in within a century, three generations