TJic Principles of Museum Administration. 223 



many products of the decorative and industrial art may be reproduced 

 easily and inexpensively, and the copying of pictures though more diffi- 

 cult is still practicable. In natural history, as has already been said, only 

 fossils can advantageously be reproduced by copies. 



2. A copy of an important object is always more desirable for educa- 

 tional use than an original of minor significance. 



D. — MODELS. 



I. Models may also be used to represent objects which are unattain- 

 able, or from their magnitude or minuteness' unavailable. Models may 

 also be used to replace alcoholic preparations, or in the place of pictures, 

 when the latter are less effective. Aquatic invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, 

 cetaceans, figures showing the races of mankind and abnormal and nor- 

 mal developments of the human body, and almost everything in the field 

 of anatomy, osteology, and embryology can be shown admirably by the 

 use of models. 



E. — PICTURES 



I . Pictures are often better than specimens to illustrate certain ideas. 

 The races of man and their distribution, for instance, can only be shown 

 by pictures and maps. 



F. — BOOKS. 



I . Certain kinds of books are more useful and safer in the museum 

 than on tlie library shelves, for in the museum they may be seen daily by 

 thousands, while in the library their very existence is forgotten by all 

 except their custodian. Books such as Audubon's Birds of North Amer- 

 ica, Gould's Humming Birds, and Owen Jones's Alhambra, are a few 

 among the numerous works of which everyone has heard and which 

 everyone wants to see once in his lifetime. In a library they are proba- 

 bly not examined by ten persons in a year ; in a museum the volumes 

 exposed to view in a glass case, and a few of the most striking plates 

 attractively framed and hung upon the wall near at hand, teach a lesson 

 to every visitor. 



G. — THE MOUNTING OF ANIMALS. 



I. Taxidermy is allied to sculpture, and should be governed by the 

 same canons of synthesis and repose. The attitudes of nature should be 

 preserved, but action should be avoided except in the case of groups 

 mounted in the midst of natural accessories, and even then action should 

 never be violent. In mounting specimens to be arranged in the syste- 

 matic series the attitudes should always be simple and in some degree 

 conventional and uniform. 



'Where enlargements are employed it is well to place the actual objects by their 

 sidCj to give an idea of the scale of enlargements. 



