84 EEPORT OF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



The United States lias, as yet, no comprehensive educational museum, 

 although there are several museums of limited scope, which have suc- 

 cessfully carried out the educational idea in the arrangement of their 

 materials; for instance, the Boston Museum of Art, the Metropolitan 

 Museum of Artin New York, the PennsylvaniaMuseumof Industrial Art, 

 the Peabody Museum of Archteology in Cambridge, the Peabody Museum 

 of Yale College, and the Boston Society of Natural History. 



The same remark applies with equal force to the museums of Europe. 

 There are certain institutions, like the Museum of Practical Geology, 

 the museums of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, the museums at Bethnal 

 Green and South Kensington, in London, the Museum of Industrial Art 

 at Berlin, the Ethnological Museum at Leipsic, the National Museum 

 of Germany at Nuremburg, the Bavarian National Museum at Munich, 

 and others, which have admirably carried out a single idea, or a limited 

 number of ideas, and which are marvelously rich in material and ar- 

 ranged in a manner full of suggestiveness. It may safelj" be said, how- 

 ever, that all the museums of antliropology, economy, and industrial art 

 now in existence are, either by design or chance, limited in their scope- 



The museum is yet to be organized which shall show, arranged ac- 

 cording to one consistent plan, the resources of the earth and the results 

 of human activity in every direction. This has not yet been done, even 

 for a single country. 



There can be little question that the National Museum of the United 

 States can be made, in the course of a few years, the most comprehen- 

 sive and instructive museum in the world. While it may not be i)os- 

 sible to gather together such treasures of art and industry as are in the 

 possession of the government museums of Europe, it is not unreasonable 

 to hope that examples of every kind of object known to man may bt 

 acquired, and that this museum may be able, by means of a thorough 

 classification, and as a result of the absence of the enormous masses of 

 duplicates, which are sure to incumber any old museum, to illustrate 

 the history of human culture better than has ever before been done. 



The educational museum being, as has been already remarked, of com- 

 paratively recent origin, and the eiforts of thoughtful men in times past 

 having been chiefly directed toward the building up of museums of re- 

 search, it is not at all strange that natural-history museums should be so 

 common, while nuiseums illustrating the history of mankind are so 

 rare. The importance of the natural history museum from the stand- 

 points of science and industry can scarcely be overrated. A museum 

 of culture must, however, be admitted to possess equal importance to 

 the philosopher and to be of greater value for the education of the pub- 

 lic at large. 



The majority of visitors to any museum go thither in search of amuse- 

 ment, or from a mere idle curiosity. Many have no desire to gain in- 

 struction, and most of those, if actuated by such a desire, fail to accom- 



