IF PUBLIC LIBRARIES, WHY NOT PUBLIC MUSEUMS? 



Bv Edward S. Morse. 



The success which has accompanied the public library act in Massa- 

 chusetts encourages the friends of science to believe that the time is 

 propitious for establishing public museums in the smaller towns of the 

 Commonwealth. It certainly is time to direct public attention to the 

 importance of the museum as an adjunct to the public library. The 

 tendencies of modern public-school education which introduce Sloyd as 

 part of its work, and ask for pictures and casts to decorate the barren 

 schoolroom, are indications that the time is ripe to found, in a modest 

 way, museums of science, art, and history in our smaller towns and 

 villages. 



A few devoted students have in past times endeavored to establish 

 institutions of this kind, but in most instances their efltbrts have been 

 abortive. A few larger cities in the country have managed to keep 

 alive the interest manifested, and their museums are now permanently 

 established. The failures, however, have outnumbered the successes 

 ten to one, and for this there must be a reason. 



The founding of a museum is far more difticult than that of a library. 

 People are trained to the latter in the development of a private library; 

 and one capable of cataloguing books can establish a small library. 

 The furniture is reduced to the simplest expression in the form of a case 

 of shelves. The material to be put upon them can readily be ordered 

 from the nearest book mart. On the other hand, the building of a 

 museum requires special gifts and special training. Besides, one 

 thoroughly imbued with the spirit of a collector should have charge of 

 a museum, though this is equally true in regard to libraries of any 

 magnitude. The absence of a public demand for museums in the past 

 has arisen from the methods of public instruction. Lessons from books, 

 and not from nature, have been the tiresome lot of school children. 

 Questions and answers, cut and dried, have tended to deaden the 

 inquiring spirit. That portion of a child's brain which is involved in 



*Eeprintecl, by permissiou, from The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1893, pp. 112-119. 



771 



