IF PUBLIC LIBRARIES WHY NOT PUBLIC MUSEUMS^ 775 



Darwin's time. The museum then, as now, consisted of aecumahitions 

 of species of animals that were of interest only to speciaUsts in their 

 respective branches of study. The interest attaching to such collec- 

 tions was incomprehensible to the layman. He strayed through a 

 museum bewildered by cases tilled with apparently simdar kmds ot 

 shells insects, and the like. The insects were always in their mature 

 state.' Not a suggestion of the life history of even a single species 

 could be found. Regiments of shells were marshaled in pasteboard 

 trays, with no inkling of the kind of life associated with them. The 

 collection of birds gave no hint of the quaint appearance of the young, 

 or of the infinite variety in the construction of their nests. As to 

 whether the creatures ever laid eggs could be ascertained only by going 

 to some other part of the hall. The schoolbooks of the time gave no 

 idea of the way in which these collections might be studied; and if by 

 chance the text-book had a more thoughtful chapter on morphology or 

 other point of view, the museum might be ransacked in vain for an 

 illustration. If one chanced to have a general book on natural history, 

 it told him about the elephant and the kangaroo, which he already 

 knew by name, at least, through the lines of a popular ditty, bnt not a 

 word of the Uttle creatures that hid under his own doorstep. The 

 museum might have a small collection of mammals, but to find a com- 

 plete collection of those of his own State he would have to go to the 

 museums of the Old World. 



Within recent years a great change has taken place, in this and some 

 other respects, in the large museums of the country, notably in Boston, 

 Cambridge, Salem, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; but 

 advances are yet to be made in some of these museums to bring their 

 collections abreast of the knowledge of to-day. Prof. Goode insists 

 that the "museum of the past must be set aside, reconstructed, trans- 

 formed from a cemetery of bric-a-brac into a nursery of living thoughts." 

 That the importance of a museum of some kind connected with the 

 larger schools has been realized in the past is seen in the custom of 

 every country academy and female seminary which sets apart a room 

 for the purposes of a school museum. But no more ingenious device 

 could have been planned to create a loathing for museums in the minds 

 of the young than those wretched travesties called "cabinets of natural 

 history." With few exceptions they were dismal failures. The scant 

 collections rarely contained anything belonging to the surrounding 

 country, unless it might be a moth-eaten owl, a plethoric paper wasps' 

 nest, or a horseshoe crab from the nearest seacoast; clutter, dust, and 

 disorder, and poorly executed labels, usually written with a hard lead 

 pencil on the bluest of writing paper, ajul all concealed in cases, the 

 wood of whose doors generally exceeded the glass in superficial area. 

 This description applies not ouly to the class of schools above men- 

 tioned, but to many of the large institutions of learning as well. Even 

 to-day there are many colleges and universities that have no museums, 



