The Scottish Nattiralist. 157 



becomes a repository of rubbish, amidst which may be discovered 

 only an occasional attempt at arrangement, and here and there 

 a specimen of value. To one who understands, in some measure, 

 what a museum may be made, there are few things more depress- 

 ing than a visit to such a one as may be too frequently met 

 with in small towns, where animals of all kinds, stones, weapons, 

 coins, and articles of furniture are intermixed as they might be in 

 some nightmare, without even the semblance of order or plan 

 in their arrangement. The fault of such museums is that they 

 have been begun without any definite plan in the minds of the 

 originators as to what they shall include, and have been added to 

 omnivorously, everything having been accepted, however little 

 suited to that already within the room. The result of this want of 

 system is that in a comparatively short time, the space, which 

 may at first have seemed too ample, is crammed ; and each new 

 acquisition has to be pushed into some corner, whether among 

 the things to which it is most akin or not. 



In a well-planned museum, on the other hand, the precise ob- 

 jects to which it is to be devoted are sketched out beforehand, 

 and the due amount of room is assigned to each. No matter 

 though for a time the space seems too great, and the empty 

 shelves stare at the visitor with a kind of mute reproach. This 

 is a far more healthy condition than overcrowding ; and the very 

 fact that they are standing empty is at once an incentive to the 

 directors of the museum to do their utmost to have them filled 

 with suitable objects, and to the public to assist in so filling 

 them. It is, from its commencement, adapted to serve as a place 

 of instruction to the visitor ; for attention is not diverted from 

 objects of real value by a crowd of nearly worthless articles, and 

 even while still very incomplete, the relations of the various 

 groups, and the plan running through the whole, may be traced 

 without difficulty. As an excellent example of a well-organised 

 museum, suitable as a model for almost all provincial towns, that 

 of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science may be selected for 

 notice ; but the method followed in its arrangement has been so well 

 described by Dr. Buchanan White, in a series of articles in the last 

 volume of this Magazine, that it is needless to recapitulate an 

 account of it here. From the success of that museum, we may 

 learn also how short a time is necessary to enable a society, when 

 really in earnest, to bring into existence collections that would be 



