3 74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



In the absence of official relations with public or private schools 

 the museum makes no demands on its visitors. It offers its privileges 

 free to children of all ages and leaves each one to choose his own method 

 of enjoyment. Whether he copies a label, reads an appropriate quota- 

 tion, talks about the group of muskrats with his playfellows, spends 

 an hour in the library or listens to the explanation of the museum 

 " teacher," who gladly answers his questions and tells him stories, 

 matters but little so long as the effect of his visit is to enhance his 

 love for the best things in life. 



Through the Museum News, a joint monthly publication of the 

 Brooklyn Institute Museums, principals and teachers in Brooklyn are 

 informed of the half hour natural science, geography, and history 

 talks, given in the children's museum lecture room. Teachers are 

 invited to bring classes to these lectures (which are illustrated with 

 lantern slides, models and experiments) or to study museum exhibits 

 correlated with school work. Some member of the museum staff is 

 always present to render every assistance to visiting classes. Objects 

 and models are taken from the cases and used in demonstration, living 

 specimens from vivaria and aquaria are shown to the nature study 

 classes, questions are answered, in fact everything that can economize 

 the time of the visitors and increase their enjoyment is done. Another 

 privilege extended to schools is the use of stuffed birds, boxes of insects 

 and other " loan material," distributed for class-room study. 



The demand for the privileges of a Children's Museum may be 

 seen from the readiness with which schools and individuals accept 

 them. More than 125 schools, many of them remotely situated, send 

 pupils and teachers to our museum; 561 visits from teachers alone 

 in search of definite information were recorded in the school months 

 of 190G, and for the same period the Children's Museum lectures at- 

 tracted an attendance of 17,253. The average annual attendance for 

 the past five years has exceeded 94,000 visitors. 



It would seem from the statistics that a Children's Museum if not 

 a life necessity, is indeed an unquestioned blessing to a great city like 

 our own, whose population is boxed in apartments or brown stone 

 blocks of such vast extent as to place the country beyond the experi- 

 ence of many children. The advantage of a cheerful, sunny, attractive 

 museum rich in natural objects, artistically displayed, where children 

 are sure to find a sympathetic welcome, where they are safe and 

 happily and profitably occupied, is scarcely appreciated until we pause 

 to consider the influence for good or evil of habits acquired in leisure 

 hours, and of the demoralizing influence of crowded city streets and 

 back alleys. 



Many of our boys and girls who are now young men and women 

 paid their first visits to the museum in company with their parents 



