86 EEFORT OF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



leiitive labels which relate to aud describe groups of objects in a manner 

 similar to that in which the individual labels describe separate articles ; 

 (IV) the labels individual and collective, should be supplemented by 

 guide-books and manuals for special departments, which shall contain 

 all the information given upon the labels arranged systematically, and 

 which shall be illustrated by engravings of the more important objects. 



Industrial museums, as a rule, exhibit only those articles which are 

 designed and constructed in the most sumptuous manner — the armor of 

 kings and knights, the furniture of palaces, the most artistic of metal 

 work, stone work, aud wood work. The ethnological museums, on the 

 other hand, admit only the implements and costumes of savage and 

 partially civilized races. Between the two there is a great chasm to be 

 tilled. Is it not as important to preserve in museums the more humble 

 aud simple objects which illustrate the domestic economy and customs 

 of the masses of the people of civilized nations, as to search for similar 

 objects in distant lands, or to treasure up only the objects which, on 

 account of their cost, are seen and used only by the most wccdthy aud 

 luxurious classes in the civilized community! A museum which at- 

 temi^tsto show the evolution of civilization, should preserve the simplest 

 products, the every-day costumes, together with the tools and appliances 

 which have been in common use by civilized man in the present and 

 past centuries. 



Such objects have at least as much claim to careful preservation as 

 similar objects gathered in distant lands ; for, although the latter are 

 at present more interesting on account of their strangeness, a century 

 hence they will be far less interesting than the objects which are in 

 common use in our own country at the present day. 



It has long been one of the standard instructions given to persons 

 charged with collecting specimens for the Smithsonian Institution, that, 

 in whatever locality they may be, they shall collect the more diligently 

 those things which are most common, paying but very little attention 

 to objects which may there be very rare, since these same objects are 

 sure to be common in some other locality, where they can be obtained 

 with greater ease. A similar practice should be followed in gathering 

 objects for an industrial museum. American ethnologists have done 

 well in devoting their energy to gathering the manufactures of the 

 North American Indian, for the jiroducts of their race would otherwise 

 have been, for the most part, lost to mankind. At the same time, much 

 that is of equal or greater importance belonging to our own ancestors 

 has been allowed to go to destruction; and we have but few illustratious 

 of the costumes and customs of the two preceding centuries of Ameri- 

 can history, except such as are preserved in books and pictures. 



To supply the place of objects too large to be placed in a musuem, too 

 evanescent to have been i)reserved, or which, on account of their rarity 

 or neglect in preserving them at the time when they could have beeu 

 obtained, are necessarily lacking in the collections, it is essential that 



