2IO POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF MUSEUMS: A EE-SUEVEY. 



By F. a. bather, M.A., D.Sc. (OxoN), 



PRESIDENT OF THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION ; BRITISH MUSEUM, NATURAL HISTORY. 



WE are rapidly approaching, and some parts of the world have 

 already reached, that millennium desired by the writer — was 

 it not Professor E. S. Morse? — who exclaimed 'Public libraries in 

 every town! then why not public museums?' With this increase in 

 number has come a change of function, or at least an added function 

 or two. Such a change is in the nature of an adaptation to the new 

 surroundings, and is necessary for the vigorous life and propagation 

 of the modern type of museum. How great the change is may be 

 realized by contrasting, let us say, the American Museum of Natural 

 History, which not only arranges attractive exhibits, but makes them 

 known by its popular Journal, with some museums in Europe that 

 still appear to be maintained in the interests of their staff, while the 

 public is only admitted for a few hours each week, to gape at an un- 

 organized crowd of objects which it can not comprehend. The student 

 of science or of art who has to make his living as a curator in a public 

 museum, which is public in fact and not merely in name, often envies 

 those colleagues who, undisturbed by the profanum vulgus, spend a 

 peaceful life in original research, such as he can only squeeze in at the 

 close of a hard day's work. But in America and Britain we can never 

 go back to those old days when visitors, after securing tickets by 

 prayer of some high person, assembled at the gate of the British 

 Museum and were conducted around it by a verger wiih a livery and 

 a black wand as his chief qualifications for the task. Nor indeed can 

 we now find ourselves in the position of that eager spinster, who, 

 after many a vain attempt, journeyed from her suburban residence 

 through mire and fog to those giant portals. 'Which department, 

 Madam?' said the majestic policeman on the threshold. 'Oh! just 

 a general look around, thank you.' 'Museum closed to-day, Mum, 

 except for students.' Back on a 'bus to Brompton, and 'No more 

 British Museum for me ! ' 



No, the times have changed and are still changing. A stage in the 

 advance was marked when Flower and Brown Goode gave us their 

 masterly surveys of museum organization. They laid down the lines on 

 which we have all been working. But still the outer conditions are 

 changing, and in some respects we fail to keep pace. The occasion for 



