1896. TWO VIEWS ON MUSEUMS. 109 



so arranged and labelled that even the casual visitor may pick up an 

 idea, or have one thrust upon him as he strolls through. 



There is much more that might be said on this point, but once 

 started on the question of museum installation it is difficult to tell 

 where to stop, and so I will stop at once. 



Washington, D.C. Frederic A. Lucas. 



II. — The Museum of the Future. 



Professor Herrera's pamphlet, reprinted from the Memorias de la 

 Sociedad '■'■ Alzate'" de Mexico, vol. ix., pp. 221-252, is entitled " Les 

 Musees de I'Avenir." Of these museums we are told " there is no 

 gallery of insects, no gallery of birds, or of mammals, or of fishes, or 

 of reptiles ; no collection of Coleoptera, no collection of Chiroptera, 

 or of pheasants, or of pigeons. Museums of the future do not classify 

 by classes, families, tribes, genera, species, sub-species, varieties, sub- 

 varieties, races, and sub-races ; they put in ordey facts, and classify ideas. 

 . . . There are rooms for heredity, for ontogenesis, caenogenesis, 

 variation, mimicry, the struggle for life, nutrition, and so on. . . . 

 These rooms are arranged in a philosophical order, and in that order 

 they must be visited by the public ; to this end there will be barriers 

 suitably disposed. . . . In the museums of the future the zoological 

 specimen is the lacquey of an idea, whereas in our present museums 

 ideas are the slaves of specimens. Thus, a specimen is not exhibited 

 because it is rare, or because it ought to be exhibited : we show the 

 most profound contempt for specimens that are rare, curious, or 

 pretty. . . . The museum of the future aims at being, not a magazine 

 of dead lumber eaten by worms, but an open book in which men can 

 read the philosophy of nature." The first room of Professor Herrera's 

 museum reminds us of some gruesome diagrams that used to be 

 visible at South Kensington, showing, by coloured squares, cubes, and 

 so forth, the amount of the various inorganic substances contained in 

 the human body, the chief difference being that the method is here 

 extended to the flesh of other animals. The idea of this room is to 

 show the unity that pervades nature, whether in chemical composition, 

 in organic matter, in organic force, in vital phenomena, in the plan of 

 organisation, in origin, end, or in the conditions and causes of evolu- 

 tion. The next room displays the comparative physiology and 

 anatomy of animals ; the natural system of classification is treated 

 with contempt ; the ideas of biology are better illustrated by the 

 association of animals living under similar conditions or using similar 

 devices, by the comparison of analogous rather than of homologous 

 organs, thus showing the numerous modifications and specialisations 

 that have been adapted to a single or to similar ends. Room no. 3 is 

 to show the various methods of reproduction, and all organs and 

 functions associated therewith. In the next room distribution is 

 dealt with, not, however, according to any scheme hitherto proposed. 



