476 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XV. 



" only to be destroyed ; and what is still worse, they bring discredit on all 

 " similar institutions, make the very name of museum a byword and a reproach, 

 "hindering instead of advancing the recognition of their value as agents in the 

 " great educational movement of the age." 



" Now, of course, the purposes for which museums are established are two — 

 " first the diffusion of instruction and rational amusement among the mass of 

 " the people, and secondly, to afford the scientific student every possible means 

 " of examining and studying the specimens of which the museum consists." 



In the case of a private museum such as ours, it is of course the latter 

 purpose that is in view, so we will see what words of advice we can gather in 

 that direction. 



" Collections for the advancement of science . . . are of value mainly in 

 " proportion to their size, and no museum at present existing has come any- 

 " where near what is required for the exhaustive study of natural history. 

 " If anyone were now to endeavour to write a complete monograph of any 

 " family in the animal kingdom, he would search in vain for materials for 

 " doing so, not only in any one museum, but in all the museums in the world 

 " put together." He then quotes an instance. " Soon after the arrival in our 

 " national museum of the great and carefully selected and labelled collection 

 " of Indian birds, presented by Mr. A. 0. Hume, containing upwards of 

 " 60,000 specimens, a well-known ornithologist commenced the volumes 

 " devoted to birds in the excellent series of manuals on the Fauna of British 

 " India, edited by Mr. Blanford. I am told that when he began the work, 

 " he was seen sitting at his table rubbing his hands with delight at the prospect 

 " of success in his labours guaranteed by such an unprecedented mass of material. 

 " But after a few weeks the scene had changed. He was pacing up and down 

 " the room, wringing the same hands in despair at the hopelessness of solving the 

 " tangled problems of variation ^according to age, sex, season and locality, the 

 " geographical distribution, and the limits and relationship of any single species 

 " owing to the absolutely insufficient number of properly authenticated speci- 

 " mens at his command. Every zoologist will recognise this as a scarcely 

 " exaggerated description of what he meets with at every step of his work." 



Scientific collections cannot of course be exhibited in show cases for many 

 reasons — the chief being the question of space and the necessity of preserving 

 them from the deteriorating influences of light, etc., and with the very limited 

 available accommodation that we have at present to content ourselves whh, it 

 is more than ever necessary that our collections should be made to occupy as 

 little space as possible. Sir William Flower gave a word of warning that 

 we may well take to heart : He said, " There is a danger of collections which 

 " are not generally exhibited becoming neglected, and degenerating into 

 " the condition of mere accumulations of rubbish. Anything of the kind is 

 " absolutely incompatible with the true requirements of specimens kept for fe- 

 " search. They specially need to be arranged in an orderly and methodical 

 "manner and to be thoroughly well catalogued and labelled, so that each may 



