REPORT OF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL MUSEUM. 83 



nation. Private individuals have often devoted themselves to the ac- 

 cumulation of collections which, cither by desig'u or in obedience to a 

 natural law recognized and sometimes expedited by museuui oflieers, 

 have found a resting-place in public halls. The Ashmoleau Museum 

 at Oxford was the result of Sir John Tradescaufs life-long toil. 



The JFuscum of Eescarch seems to have originated within the last three 

 or four centuries, and, perhaps, to have been one of the results of the 

 promulgation of the inductive philosophy. The collections gathered by 

 Linmeus, those of Sir Ilans Sloane, which formed the nucleus of the 

 British Musemn, and of Bulfon, Cuvier, and their collaborators, as a 

 beginning of the Natural Histor^^ Museum of Paris, were among the 

 earliest of this class. 



The Educational jruscum is of much more recent origin, and may be 

 considered as one of the outgrowths of the modern industrial exhibition. 

 The World's Fair of London in 1851, the first of a long series of inter- 

 national exhibitions, was utilized by the Government of Great Britain as 

 a starting-point for a number of national and educational museums, the 

 most perfect which have as j'et been organized, and the subsequent 

 World's Fairs have been utilized in a similar manner, so that nearly' 

 every civilized country now has museums of this description. 



The systematic exhibition of the products of the earth and the achieve- 

 ments of human industry for the instruction of visitors, the improve- 

 ment of the public taste, and the fostering of arts of design had not 

 been attempted, probably scarcely thought of, thirty-two years ago. 



The gradual deterioration of industrial exhibitions and World's Fairs, 

 the predominance of purely commercial features in those which have 

 been attempted of late years, the growing diiJiculty in securing the at- 

 tendance of exhibitors would seem to indicate that their period of 

 greatest usefulness is in the past. 



The present demand is for something better, more systematic, more 

 definitely instructive in its aims — something which shall alford the same 

 long vistas into the palaces of nature and art, and at the same time pro- 

 vide guide-marks to explain their meaning. 



Effects of the Centennial Exhibition o/lS7G. — One of the results of the 

 Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876 is that it made plain to the people of 

 the United States the educational importance of a great industrial 

 museum. It suggested to the observant the thought that if so much 

 that is inspiring and instructive could be imparted by a collection of 

 objects gathered together chiefly with commercial ends in view on the 

 part of the exhibitors, necessarily somewhat unsystematicall}' arranged, 

 and with little effort toward labeling in an instructive numner, an im- 

 mense field was open for educating the public by gathering together a 

 selected series of similar objects, which could be so classified and ex- 

 plained by means of labels and guide-books that they should impart a 

 consistent and systematic idea of the resources of the world and of 

 human achievement. 



