256 Memorial of George Brozvn Goode. 



are to be favored in preference to all others. Many museums fail to 

 make this choice at the start, and instead of steering toward some defi- 

 nite point, drift hither and thither, and, it may be, are foundered in 

 mid-ocean. 



There is no reason why the mu.seum of the Brooklyn Institute may not 

 in time attain to world-wide fame and attract students and visitors from 

 afar. It would be wise, perhaps, in shaping its policy to remember that 

 in the twin city of New York are two admirable museums which may be 

 met more advantageously in cooperation than in rivalry. Brooklyn may 

 appropriately have its own museum of art and its museum of natural 

 history, but they should avoid the repetition of collections already so near 

 at hand. 



In selecting courses for the development of a museum, it may be useful 

 to consider what are the fields open to museum work. 



As a matter of convenience museums are commonly classed in two 

 groups — those of science and those of art, and in Great Britain the great 

 national system is mainly under the control of The Science and Art 

 Department of the Committee of Council on Education. 



The classification is not entirely satisfactory, since it is based upon 

 methods of arrangement, rather than upon the nature of the objects 

 to be arranged, and since it leaves a middle territory (only partially occu- 

 pied by the English museum men of either department), a great mass of 

 museum material of the greatest moment both in regard to its interest 

 and its adaptability for purposes of public instruction. 



On the one side stand the natural history collections, undoubtedly best 

 to be administrated by the geologist, botanist, and zoologist. On the 

 other side are the fine art collections, best to be arranged from an aesthetic 

 standpoint, by artists. Between is a territory which no English word 

 can adequately describe — which the Germans call Culturgeschichte — the 

 natural history of cult, or civilization, of man and his ideas and achieve- 

 ments. The museums of science and art have not yet learned how to 

 partition this territory. An exact classification of museums is not at 

 present practicable, nor will it be until there has been some redistribu- 

 tion of the collections which they contain. It may be instructive, how- 

 ever, to pass in review the principal museums of the world, indicating 

 briefly their chief characteristics. 



Every great nation has its museum of nature. The natural history 

 department of the British Museum, recently removed from the heart of 

 Ivondon to palatial quarters in South Kensington, is probably the most 

 extensive — wdth its three great divisions, zoological, botanical, and geolog- 

 ical. The Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, in the garden of plants in Paris, 

 founded in 1795, with its galleries of anatomy, anthropology, zoology, 

 botany, mineralogy, and geology, is one of the most extensive, but far 

 less potent in science now than in the days of Cuvier, Eamarck, St. 

 Hilaire, Jussieu, and Brongniart. In Washington, again, there is a 



