440 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



There is no reason why the museum 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 co-operation 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 ob- 

 jects to be arranged, and since it leaves a middle territory (only 

 partially occupied by the English museum men of either department), 

 a great mass of museum material of the greatest moment both in re- 

 gard to its interest and its adaptability for purposes of public in- 

 struction. 



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 Cnl- 

 turgeschichte — the natural history of cult, or civilization, of man and 

 his ideas and achievements. 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 redistribution of the collections which they contain. It may 

 be instructive however, 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 London to palatial quarters in South Kensington, is probably the 

 most extensive — with its three great divisions, zoological, botanical, 

 and geological. 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, Lamarck, 

 St. Hilaire, Jussieu, and Brougniart. In Washington, again, there is a 

 National Museum with anthropological, zoological, botanical, mineral- 

 ogical, and geological collections in one organization, together with a 

 large additional department of arts and industries, or technology. 



Passing to specialized natural history collections, perhaps the most 



