34 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



School room may have its mttseiiin. A cheap inflammable build- 

 ing may be a more useful museum building than a fire-proof 

 structure costing millions. In an inflammable building it would 

 not be wise to store valuable material, but in it could be dis- 

 played labels, pictures, maps and books illustrated by such 

 cheap and common specimens as elm leaves, squash seeds, 

 broken pebbles, English sparrows, mice, or the skull of a dog. 

 A museum of such specimens, accompanied by appropriate labels, 

 books, maps, pictures and models, might easily be of more ser- 

 vice to a community than some existing museums costing say 

 ten times as much. 



Case problems may delay curators not months but years. 

 First there is the discussion as to what kind of a case and 

 how to make it dust proof; what it should be made of, the 

 color the back-ground is to be painted, or whether burlap will be 

 used instead of paint. In this way, while waiting for cases, 

 years go by. People who would use the museum grow old and 

 die. Children who have time in their receptive condition of 

 mind to profit most in the museum grow up and have their time 

 occupied by necessary labor. Their minds become blunted to 

 the useful impressions which they might gain in the museum, 

 and still the museum curator has not secured the case he needs 

 for the exhibit in time to benefit all the classes of people, from 

 the old people to the school children. As a matter of fact, all 

 these people could have gotten the maximum amount of benefit 

 from the museum, had the specimens been exhibited without 

 any case at all, on the wall, on tables, on the floor, or even out 

 in the big out-door world, had there been sufficient and ap- 

 propriate labelling. Thus the kind of. material and color of case 

 seems to have little to do with the usefulness of a museum. I 

 have seen museums with black cases, white cases, reddish cases, 

 yellowish cases and portions of museums with no cases at all, 

 and every one of these had some exhibits that were superior in 

 graphic usefulness to some class of the public than were any 

 other exhibits known to me. No doubt the back-grounds 

 should be carefully considered, certain colors being better than 

 others. Perhaps the relationship of colors or general harmony 

 and the relationship of light and a subdued quietness of color are 

 of extreme importance, but visitors have been in a museum 

 where the cases were entirely white, been interested and ob- 

 tained useful information some little time before noticing 

 whether the cases were white or black. While black cases may 

 not be advisable, several of our best museums have them, and 

 in some instances one sees the exhibit before it is realized that 

 the case is black. No doubt either a white or a black case may 



