AERANGEMENT OF MUSEUMS. 201 



belong to the locality, and wliicli have already struck upon the eye 

 of such a person as the one contemplated, arc clearly explained in 

 a well-arranged catalogue." * 



Very similar views were last year expressed by Dr. Giinther in 

 his Presidential Address to the biological Section at the Swansea 

 meeting. After insisting upon the importance of a provincial 

 museum containing an arranged series of well-preserved specimens, 

 and of its curator not admitting into his collection any specimen 

 that is not well mounted and a fair representative of its species, he 

 says : " The direct benefit of a complete collection of the flora and 

 fauna of the district in which the provincial museum is situated, is 

 obvious, and cannot be exaggerated. The pursuit of collecting and 

 studying natural-history objects gives to the persons who are 

 inclined to devote their leisure hours to it a beneficial training for 

 whatever their real calling in life may be : they acquire a sense of 

 order and method ; they develop their gift of observation ; they are 

 stimulated to healthy exercise. Nothing encourages them more in 

 this pursuit than a well-named and easily-accessible collection in 

 their own native town, upon which they can fall back as a pattern 

 and an aid for their own." 



In another part of his address, speaking of the requirements of an 

 educational natural-history museum, he says : " Its principal object 

 is to supply the materials for teaching and studying the elements 

 and general outlines of biology ; it supplements, and is the most 

 necessary help for, oral and practical instruction, which always 

 ought to be combined with this kind of museum. The conservation 

 of objects is subservient to their immediate utility and unrestricted 

 accessibility to the student. The collection is best limited to a 

 selection of representatives of the various groups or ' types ' 

 arranged in strictly systematic order, and associated with prepara- 

 tions of such parts of their organisation as are most characteristic of 

 the group, "f 



It is thus seen, in the most recent contribution we have to this 

 subject, how important it is considered that the selection of objects 

 should be restricted to those only which fulfil a definite purpose, 

 either, on the one hand, to illustrate a local flora and fauna, or, on 

 the other, to aid the lecturer in the science he is teaching, or the 

 student in his special branch of research. 



Dr. Giinther's address deals principally with the arrangement of 

 our new I^atural History Museum at South Kensington, which will 

 form one section of the British Museum, and in which the views I 

 have brought before you will find practical expression in the central 

 portion of the building being divided into a room for British Zoology 

 {a local zoological collection on a large scale), and an Index Museum 

 "devoted to specimens selected to show the type-characters of the 

 principal groups of organised beings " (an educational zoological 

 collection). 



* ' Rep. Brit. Assoc, for 1870,' Trans. Sections, pp. 93, 94. 

 t ' Rep. Brit. Assoc, for 1880,' pp. 592, 593. 



