LIBRARY 



BULLETIN -1-- 



Qp Qardon. 



THE CHARLESTON MUSEUM 



Vol. 5 CHARLESTON, S. C, APRIL, 1909 No. 4 



A PIEDHONT MINERAL COLLECTION 



Every important museum should seek to gather and exhibit 

 scientific material with reference to some definite object, and 

 not merely in a general and miscellaneous way. Of course, 

 every museum needs, and should have, general collections, to 

 give to visitors and students some idea of the richness and 

 variety of objects comprehended in the great divisions of nature, 

 and to enable them to become acquainted by actual observa- 

 tion with the plants and animals of distant lands and the min- 

 erals and fossils of remote and peculiar localities. So far as 

 this is attempted or realized, however, there is of necessity a 

 certain sameness in the contents of museums, and one is to a 

 large extent like another. The same is equally true of libraries 

 and art-collections, also. 



But apart from this general work every museum thould aim 

 at a specialty of its own, — some branch or department in which 

 it should have, and be known to have, a distinctive character, 

 and to possess material and afford opportunities that cannot 

 be found elsewhere. The first and most obvious form in which 

 this aspect of a museum's work can and should be cultivated, is 

 in the matter of local collections, the illustration, with utmost 



fulness, of the fauna and flora, the minerals, rocks and fossils 



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