The Scottish Naturalist 159 



trict ought to be included in central museums — i.e., in such 

 localities as would render them most accessible to residents in all 

 parts of the districts, and would also be most easy of access to 

 scientific travellers. From such collections, made in even a single 

 province, much could be learned of the effect on each animal or 

 plant of the different conditions just enumerated. Conclusions 

 thus arrived at, based on large series of specimens, would probably 

 be found to apply to facts of variation and of distribution in wider 

 areas ; and, at least, they would afford working hypotheses — most 

 useful of aids when sufficiently restrained, and not assumed to be 

 truths without proof. 



There are few methods of giving stability to, and furthering 

 the work of, Natural History Societies, so efficacious as the es- 

 tablishment of a thoroughly good museum, in which the one 

 great aim has been to make perfect collections from the district 

 embraced by each Society. In the fulfilment of this aim all the 

 members can take part ; each can do something for the object of 

 common solicitude to all ; and the fact of sharing in this common 

 solicitude forms a strong bond among the members. The field, 

 even in a limited area of country, is practically unlimited ; for 

 there is no prospect of exhausting the material requiring to be 

 wrought out, however constant the labour devoted to it. The 

 collections existing in it are a most valuable assistance to members 

 studying groups well represented in the museum, and save much 

 expenditure of useless labour — useless, that is, in merely doing 

 again what had been done before, but had been forgotten in the 

 absence of such a record as collections supply. Where any de. 

 partment had not been previously studied in the district, this fact 

 would be at once rendered evident by its absence from the museum ; 

 and the existence of the blank would be a powerful stimulus to 

 members of the Society to try to fill it. It is quite unnecessary to 

 do more than refer to the great advantage that the use of a well- 

 equipped museum is to every Naturalists' Society, in affording the 

 means of illustrating the papers read before it ; and the advantage 

 of possessing, in permanent and most valuable form, the results 

 of (frequently) many years' work on the part of many of its most 

 laborious and successful members. If there is no public institu- 

 tion of the kind to which local collections can be presented, they 

 are apt to be allowed to go to ruin on the death of the worker, 

 and all record of much good work is entirely lost. 



