38 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have for the most part remained separate from the older of them. 

 Perhaps the chief reason why the universities and museums have kept 

 apart is the character of their work; natural science in a museum con- 

 sists largely in accumulation of collections and in descriptive research, 

 in the university in experimental science. This makes up the essential 

 difference between the curator, on the one side, and the laboratory 

 worker on the other; or, in other words, between the classifier and the 

 experimenter. And it is curious to note that laboratories arose first 

 quite apart from both museum and university, in the private houses of 

 men of analytic mind ; one needs only recall the names of Koger Bacon, 

 Vesalius, Galileo, Harvey and, in modern times, Darwin. And those 

 who were interested in comparative anatomy and physiology were at the 

 beginning for the most part private physicians. As this work gained in 

 importance they moved naturally to those institutions that offered the 

 greater facilities for that kind of pursuit, consequently to the uni- 

 versities. 



This has been the merest historical sketch of the connection of 

 museums with other learned associations, while the subject is one of 

 sufficient interest to fill a volume and then be far from exhausted. 

 But it will have to suffice for our present purpose. 



Now let us see the present ramifications of our institutions of nat- 

 ural history, and limit ourselves to the subjects of biology and geology. 

 Of these there are, in the first place, the general academies, which may 

 be characterized as being broad in subject, and open to all who are in- 

 terested, to layman as well as to investigator. The latter quality is a 

 particularly valuable possession, by virtue of which became associated 

 in common interests many people who would find themselves alien in a 

 more specialized association; for the specialist's research is largely de- 

 pendent, at least in America, upon the gifts of amateurs, and all 

 specialists are recruited from the ranks of amateurs. Probably the 

 amateurs who are drawn to an academy by their natural tastes make 

 better members than those who have chosen their calling after delibera- 

 tion. The academies publish " proceedings " which include the most 

 diverse subjects. Then there are museums, frequently associated with 

 such academies, less usually with universities. Their primary object 

 is the conservation of collections, and they have the same relation to 

 natural history specimens as libraries have to books. The greater of 

 them are reference collections where one goes to find the original speci- 

 mens of descriptions. Their curators are men whose writing is largely 

 limited to the materials of such collections and to the theoretical ideas 

 based on such material. For the most part these museums now sepa- 

 rate their reference and exhibition collections, and devote much 

 thought to the most suitable presentation of the latter, following Hux- 

 ley's thought that an exhibition collection should not aim to show all its 



