774 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



Charles Kingsley, in an address to workiugmen, said: 



You must acciuiie something of that industrious habit of mind which the study 

 of natural science gives— the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true 

 differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see— the art of connecting 

 facts together in your mind in cause and eft'ect. 



The public museum fosters the art of collecting; and of all habits to 

 encourage, in the young and old alike, the habit of collecting is one of 

 the best. It has been said that one who does not learn to play whist 

 is laying up a dismal old age; the same might be said of one who has 

 not cultivated the collector's spirit. It induces habits of neatness, 

 order, and skill, says one writer. Young- people are kept out of mis- 

 chief; to middle-aged people it is a rest and relaxation, and old people 

 find in their collections a perennial source of pleasure. 



Prof. Groode quotes an eminent English lecturer as stating that our 

 nation is deteriorating in regard to culture; that where, twenty years 

 ago, five hundred towns supported, year after year, courses of lectures 

 on scientific and literary subjects, to-day scarcely fifty of these places 

 feel encouraged to continue the effort. If there is no apparent reason 

 for this decadence, then it will be well-nigh useless to hope for the 

 establishment of museums. If, however, it can be shown that with the 

 advent of the lecture bureau the market was flooded with poor or sen- 

 sational lecturers, comic readers, etc., and as a result the lecture plat- 

 form, as we formerly knew it, became converted into an amusement 

 stage; if, furthermore, it can be shown that the magazine literature of 

 the country gives far greater space to matters of science and art, thus 

 providing the kinds of intellectual food formerly given from the lecture 

 platform, then we may hope that there is no decadence in the culture 

 of the people, and that an interest in ijublic museums may be easily 

 aroused. 



A change has certainly taken place in the last thirty years in the 

 tendency of the community toward collecting objects of natural history. 

 Private collectors of shells, insects, birds, etc., were far more numerous 

 thirty years ago than they are today. The same is true of England. 

 An eminent authority laments that " private collections are failing in 

 Liverpool and all around ; and teaching is everywhere hard and harden- 

 ing in its results." Yet there is surely no dying out of the collector's 

 spirit in certain lines, as witness the thousands interested in postage- 

 stamp collecting, with their established societies and periodicals. 



To awaken a desire in the smaller towns for a i)ublic museum, it is 

 needful that a good example be cited. To see examples of any kind, 

 one must go up to the great cities to find them. For Kew England the 

 fingers of one hand could almost count them, and for the rest of this 

 great Republic, outside of college museums, the fingers of the other 

 hand would be sufflcient to keep tally. 



If we examine into the character of these museums, we shall find 

 that, with some notable exceptions, they stand where they did before 



