98 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



should also be on a small scale a collection to show the anatomy 

 and physiology of life, as displayed in Professor Flower's Index 

 Collections. This might be well done in every provincial museum by 

 making the extent of any one series dependent on the accommodation. 

 A clear, easy handbook should explain the whole collection, written 

 in English and not in that bastard speech, a kind of Tartar jargon, in 

 which every other word is a technical term requiring a dictionary to 

 explain it, and which schoolboys call " beastly dull "—as a matter of 

 fact, all dull men in museums should be pensioned off. 



One-half of every provincial museum at least, unless the museum 

 is a very big one, should be devoted to a local collection. It is local 

 collections which ought to form the staple of local museums, the rest 

 being subsidiary. What really interest and are most useful in teach- 

 ing the greater number of country yokels, are the things they can find 

 about home and know something of at home, and what they should 

 be taught is the vast interest and importance of this kind of knowledge 

 at their elbow when coordinated and arranged. Every object in 

 such a collection should be the best obtainable, and set up as much 

 hke Nature as possible, with its natural surroundings and food shown. 

 What a number of facts and what a mass of knowledge have been 

 accumulated by our workmen's societies in Lancashire and Yorkshire, 

 on the hfe history of the plants, of the insects, and the land and fresh- 

 water shells of those counties ; and what a number of busy people 

 there would be ready and willing to breed obscure moths and beetles, 

 and thus to trace the life stages of many forms where they are still 

 unknown, and to do similar work ! 



It seems to me that Lord Walsingham's exhibition of butterflies 

 and moths in the British room at the Museum has already made 

 more genuine real naturalists among London boys than all the 

 hideous shows of some of the older parts of the great Museum put 

 together. Such a local collection should also be most accurately 

 labelled by the very best men, and not left to any amateur with two 

 or three books on his shelves. For such collections are not merely 

 intended to amuse the casual crowd, but to help school-boys and 

 other collectors to name their own collections. There should, if 

 possible, be also provided a guide, instructing these inexperienced 

 collectors how to preserve objects, how to detach fossils from their 

 matrix, how to dry plants, etc. ; in fact, how to make use of the little 

 knowledge which boys can acquire in the few minutes a day 

 their parents and masters allow them to spare from trying to kill each 

 other at football. 



Again, it seems to me very proper that the great museum in 

 Cromwell Road, in addition to its general collections, should contain 

 a special collection of local objects kept together and shown together. 

 This ought to be the type and model for all provincial museums to 

 follow. The great museum is, in fact, the local museum for London— 

 this great empire of London, with a milUon boys and girls, the great 



