38 0?? the Formation of a Local Museuw. 



of minerals and fossils — such is the inventory and about the 

 scientific order of then* contents. 



The result of such an association as this of articles which 

 have no sort of relationship with the rest, is to convert the 

 whole into rubbish, using the word in the Palmerstonian 

 sense of being '• matter in the wrong place." Not that such 

 museums, however, are absolutely useless. In default of 

 better, they are useful, just in j)i'oportion as they encourage 

 the collecting instinct in the beholders. But it will be ad- 

 mitted by those who are best able to judge that the only way 

 to make a local museum what it should be is to decline with 

 thanks all offers of foreign curiosities, and objects of which 

 no history has been preserved, and to which, consequently, 

 no value can attach, and to confine attention to the collection 

 of natural objects procurable within the confines of the 

 county to which the Society limits its researches. 



It is useless to attempt to vie with larger and older 

 museums by accepting everything that may be offered ; for 

 not only would such a collection probably never rise above 

 mediocrity, and would occupy a great deal more space than 

 would be required for the arrangement of locally collected 

 objects, but from an educational point of view it would never 

 be so valuable as a well -arranged series of minerals and 

 fossils, animals and plants, collected within what may be 

 termed the Society's area. 



If for special reasons it should be deemed desu'able to 

 preserve within the museum walls other objects than these, 

 they might be arranged in a separate department, and kept 

 quite distinct from the educational series. 



At the last meeting of the British Association, held at 

 Swansea in August, 1880, Dr. Giinther, in his presidential 

 address to the Biological Section, referred in marked terms 

 to the value of provincial museums when properly designed 

 and arranged. 



" The direct benefit," he observed, " of a complete collec- 

 tion of the flora and fauna of the district in which the pro- 

 vincial museum is situated js obvious, and cannot be 

 exaggerated. 



