10 KEi'OKT OF MATIOJS'AL MU8EUM, 18t>-l. 



The educational musciuu is 01' comx)arati\ ely recent origin, and may 

 be «aid to be one of the outgrowtlis of the modern indiiistrial ex])©- 

 «ition. Tlie World's Fair of London in 1851, the first of a long series 

 of international exhibitions, was utilized by the Government of Great 

 Britain as a startiiigpoint for a number of national educational mu- 

 seums, the most perfect wliicli have as yet been organized, and many 

 subsequent World's Fairs have been taken advantage of in a similar 

 manner, so that nearly every civilized country now lias a system of 

 public museums. 



One of the results of the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1870 was that 

 it made jjlain to the people of the United States the educational 

 importance of great museums. It suggested the thought that if so 

 much that is inspiring and instructive can be imparted by the exhibi- 

 tion of natural and manufactured objects gathered together, chiefly 

 with commercial ends in view on the part of the exhibitors, neces- 

 sarily somewhat unsystematically arranged and with little eftbrt to- 

 ward labeling in an instructive manner, an immense iield is open for 

 educating the public by gathering together a selected series of sim- 

 ilar objects, wliich may be so classified and explained by means of 

 labels and guide-Looks that they shall imjjart a consistent and sys- 

 tematic idea of the resources of the world and of human achieve- 

 ment. 



The United States has as yet no system of educational museums, al- 

 tliough there are several museums of limited scope, which have success- 

 fully carried out the educational idea in the arrangement of their ma- 

 terials; for instance, the American Museum of Natural llistory in New 

 York, the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, the Museum 

 of the Peabody Academy of Sciences in Salem, the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Natural Sciences, the Boston Museum of Art, the Metro- 

 politan Museum of Art in New York, the Pennsylvania Museum of In- 

 dustrial Art, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Cambridge, the 

 Peabody Museum of Yale College, and the Boston Society of Natural 

 llistory. 



The same remark applies with equal force to the nmseums of Eu- 

 rope. There are, however, institutions, like the Museum of Practical 

 Geology, the museum of the Iloyal College of Surgeons, the museums 

 at Bcthual Green and South Kensington, in London, the Museum of 

 Industrial Art at Berlin, the Ethnological Museum at Leipsic, the 

 National Miiseum of Germany at Nuremburg, the Bavarian National 

 Museuni 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 arranged in a manner full of suggest iveness. 



The museum now under the charge of tlio Smith.sonian Institution 

 has, through the action of influences beyond the control of its manage- 

 ment, in fact by the terms of the act of Congress which authorizes its 



