ABOUT MUSEUMS. 39 



1. An unlimited collection ; usually unfortunate. 



2. A collection limited as to place. For example, all 

 the different specimens that can be found in a given 

 county, in a certain township, by the banks of some 

 stream, or on a selected mountain. 



3. A collection limited as to time. As coins between 

 1776 and 1861 ; or specimens found between May and 

 September. 



4. A collection limited in kind, e. g., minerals, 

 stamps, ferns, beetles, seeds, snow-crystals. 



5. Collections limited in two or more of these ways ; 

 as, for example, flowers that blossom on Alt. Washing- 

 ton in June ; the varieties of quartz that occur in your 

 own town ; the insects that visit your rosebush during 

 one year. 



6. Group-collections, by which I mean collections 

 of objects of the same general kind ; and in connec- 

 tion therewith, other objects naturally grouped with 

 them. To illustrate, suppose a tree-collection. If 

 you begin with the chestnut, you might get a piece of 

 the wood, showing the grain ; then you would group 

 about this specimens of the chestnut bark, leaves, 

 flowers, and fruit. You would add all the varieties of 

 moss that grow on the tree, all insects that frequent 

 and injure it, perhaps a sketch of the entire tree, and 

 whatever else you might conceive to be naturally con- 

 nected with it. 



One variety of group-collection might be called a 

 Development-collection, by which I mean a collection 

 that shows different stages of growth. If you wished 

 to show the progress in methods of lighting, you could 

 arrange a series containing a pine-knot, a rush-light, 

 tallow dip, wax taper, whale-oil lamp, fluid lamp, kero- 

 sene lamp, gas-fixtures, and the arc and incandescent 

 electric lights. Or to illustrate the life-history of an 

 insect, you could have a series of specimens beginning 



