2172 



Journal of Applied Microscopy 



side lighted buildings for science museums, while a moderate interjection of the 

 features of each into the other is permissible, perhaps in some cases desirable. 

 (Some of the subordinate halls in the Natural History Museum in London are 

 abundantly filled with with light from top and side lights.) 



For illustration, the central dome-covered apartment of the Metropolitan Art 

 Museum is surrounded by courts, halls and exhibition spaces lighted from the 

 sides (Fig. 14), and the top floors of science museums admit of a skylight treat- 

 ment as in the second floor and gallery of the Chicago Academy of Sciences 

 (Fig. 15), while a more complete assumption of the art form is shown in the Uni- 

 versity Museum, Oxford, holding the Pitt Rivers collection (Fig 16), in the main 

 hall of the Natural History Museum, London, and in the Museum of the Jardin des 

 Plantes, Paris, in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, Zoological Section 

 of the Dublin Museum, etc., not, however, it appears to me, with the most ad- 

 mirable results. 



A bastard effect of vertical lighting is effectively used in science museums 



Fig. 16. — University Museum, Oxford (Piit Rivers Collection). 



where a gallery, running around a lower hall and plentifully lighted by windows, 

 allows its light to fall upon the floor below. It is a mistake, as seen in many 

 European museums, to exaggerate the limits of this concession by carrying two 

 stories about a lower hall, in the form of galleries. The effects then become lugu- 

 brious (Fig. 17). Such gallery structure is attractively shown in Fig. 1, and, in 

 spite of inartistic installation, not unpleasantly in the Manchester Museum in 

 Owens College, Manchester, England (Fig. 18). 



The faulty palisaded dreariness of the superimposed galleries might be 

 helped somewhat by always maintaining a very wide main floor, and successively 

 narrowing the width of the galleries above it. 



A word may be written about the entrances of museums. They are impor- 

 tant features ; I mean the first view inside the museum walls. Visitors should 

 not enter against a blank wall, and be limited in their impressions to a check 

 counter and a turn-stile. Expansion is the emotion to evoke at that moment. (See 



