NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS 39 



specimens but rather to place on view particular groups of a direct 

 teaching value. How far even the best collections do actually teach is, 

 however, a matter of much dispute among museum directors. Some 

 museums are trying the plan of frequently changing the exhibition col- 

 lections, so as to offer more variety to the public. Thus the exhibition 

 collections represent faunae, factors of distribution and of evolution, 

 phyletic series, habitats of animals, stratigraphic series, etc. For the 

 gathering of collections of these two kinds museums, as far as they are 

 able, send out regular collecting expeditions; and indeed our National 

 Museum is, to a great extent, the result of natural explorations. Both 

 academies and museums usually maintain public lecture courses — as 

 now do almost all learned institutions. 



The work that the museums are doing in biology is mainly taxo- 

 nomic, the study of groups, and ecologic, that of life environments. 

 Their teaching is accomplished by short lecture courses, natural history 

 excursions, and by exhibition of collections illustrating particular 

 subjects. 



The remainder of the work in natural history is done mainly in 

 other institutions. Mineralogy is the branch of geology studied chiefly 

 in universities and various technical schools. Almost all the branches of 

 biology, except taxonomy, are taught outside of museums. Morphology 

 and physiology are followed mainly at universities and marine labora- 

 tories, the experimental study of evolution including inheritance at 

 these and at special experimental stations — governmental and private, 

 and the newer sides of biology, biochemistry, biophysics and compara- 

 tive psychology are practically unrepresented at the museums. For 

 experimental research as distinguished from taxonomic, in fact for the 

 study of vital details of any kind, one goes to a laboratory rather than 

 to a museum. 



Thus, on the one hand, there is the natural-history museum. Its 

 research presents the historical or phyletic standpoint, and tends to 

 consider the entire adult organism without attempt at abstraction of 

 particular qualities. There is the laboratory proper, at university or 

 marine or fresh-water or experiment station, that digs into the inside 

 of the animal with the microscope, that tries to trace its whole develop- 

 ment, that attempts to reduce its processes to known physical and 

 chemical factors. The two sets of institutions are, on the whole, 

 sharply differentiated, their work is contrasted, one can not say a prion 

 which has the greater importance, but in time we shall be able to de- 

 cide which has brought the greatest treasures to human knowledge. 

 Certain it is that the pioneer work of the taxonomist opened the way 

 for the theory of descent, and that without such work the experimental 

 student of evolution could hardly attack his subject. And high-class 

 taxonomic work requires as rare judgment and intuition as is demanded 

 in any other scientific pursuit. 



