Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 72.djvu/383

Rh passed a bill authorizing the city to erect a new Children's Museum Building at a cost not to exceed $175,000. With the improved equipment thus provided the Children's Museum would not only serve a larger number of children, but would also serve them more efficiently in proportion to expenditure.

Through publications from the German press we learn that certain educators in Berlin are advocating a children's museum for that city. Meanwhile in our own country museums are beginning to feel the importance of giving more attention to the education of children. In large cities the field for smaller museums is always increasing, and one can but hope that the time may soon come when a system of these institutions, each studying and adapting itself to the needs of its particular

locality, will be working as branches of a large central museum, with its skilled artists, modelers, taxidermists and preparateurs.

As a small museum in a large city serves a moving population, its service to the individual is necessarily limited by a constant change of clientele. Smaller towns, on the other hand, offer conditions for an almost ideal development. The Fairbanks Museum, in the little town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is an excellent example of museum leadership in a small center.

Since the Children's Museum has demonstrated its worth to one community there is reason to expect that it will make its way into others and the variety of problems to be solved in adapting its work to new conditions offers one of the most attractive fields of modern education.