Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/221

Rh sake of students, too, technical terms and labels are introduced; these are above the ordinary visitor and disgust him. For the sake of the public, on the other hand, much space, time and money are devoted to elaborate mounting of the objects. This, in itself to be commended, and practicable when restricted to a selected series, sets a standard that is far too high for application to all the thousands of exhibited specimens, since this extension of it absorbs energy that were better employed in other directions, and renders the specimens less accessible to both investigator and student. Again, much of the material amassed for the specialist is not readily stored, and, finding its way into the show-cases, detracts from their effect and overweights both layman and student.

For such a museum then, I suggest a tripartite arrangement of the collections, corresponding with the three functions.

First, there would be a stored series, in drawers, or special cases, or private rooms, so arranged as to be easily transferred to the workrooms, and reserved for the use of specialists or researchers.

The series for students may assume two forms. One, a collection of objects to be handled, best stored in a private room and immediately accessible to accredited students. The other, a large exhibited series, under glass when advisable, arranged systematically and properly labeled, but without superfluous niceties of mounting. This should be kept in galleries to which access could be had on application to an attendant. The general public should not be permitted to wander freely through them, and especially should loving couples and infants in arms be warned off. It would probably be a sufficient barrier if each visitor were required to write his or her name and address in a book kept at the entrance.

Finally, there would be other rooms for a smaller series of carefully selected objects, so arranged as to make the utmost appeal to the great public.

The fundamental distinction between the series for research and that for public exhibition has long been realized by directors of natural history museums, and has been strenuously urged by Flower and Brown Goode. The directors of art-museums are just beginning to apprehend it; but even the best museums of natural history are still far from the ideal upheld, not for the first time, in Flower's address to the British Association fourteen years ago. If I may judge from my own limited experience, the chief reason for this failure is the existence of those two distinct types of visitor, the layman and the student. We are obliged in self-defence to exhibit far more specimens than we know to be good for the public, because if we did not we should be doing little else than answering the enquiries of amateurs, and unlocking drawers for all manner of students. Moreover, in the absence of