SOME NEW BOOKS. 



The Museums Association. 



Museums Association. Report of Proceedings. . . . Fifth Annual General 

 Meeting, held in Dublin, June 26 to 29, 1894. 8vo. Pp. 260, 15 plates. To be 

 had of the Secretaries to the Association: Sheffield and York. Price los. to 

 non-members. 



The issue of this Report has been delayed by difficulties with the 

 preparation of the plates, until just before the opening of the 1895 

 meeting. The Report shows no falling off in the activity of this 

 energetic Association, which now numbers thirty-seven museums and 

 102 associates ; while we are informed that the number of members 

 and associates present at the meeting was larger than in any previous 

 year. 



The opening address of the President, Dr. V. Ball, whose 

 lamented death has been so recently announced, has already been 

 published in full in the pages of Natural Science (vol. v., p. 21) ; 

 and need not be further alluded to. 



It is impossible to turn over the pages of the Report without feel- 

 ing that the Association fulfils its purpose of "the extension of 

 individual experience, and the mutual interchange of ideas." It has 

 become almost a platitude to remark on the difference between the 

 "modern" museum and its predecessors; and the Report for 1894 

 contains enough modern ideas to perplex seriously a curator of the 

 old type. Those who are ready to make use of the experience of 

 others will derive great advantage from the study of the Report. 

 Every curator knows how often the acquisition of a new specimen 

 involves the designing of a special arrangement for exhibiting it. The 

 authorities of the Science and Art Museum at Dublin have exercised 

 great ingenuity in the elaboration of devices for this purpose, and Mr. 

 H. B. White contributes a paper which is full of information on this 

 subject. The general principles on which to construct a show-case, 

 the suspension of a whale's skeleton weighing some seven or eight 

 tons, the frames used for pictures, the exhibition of coins which 

 require to be looked at from both sides, and many other subjects are 

 here treated; and some are illustrated by figures drawn to scale. 

 Mr. W. B. Pearsall describes a convenient arrangement for exhibiting 

 large series of isolated teeth and other similar objects in such a way 

 as to permit of their being examined from all sides. Mr. F. A. Bather 

 gives an account of fifteen Colonial museums which he has visited, 

 and of the collections and fittings which he has noted in those 

 museums. There are also suggestions for the arrangement of minera- 

 logical and botanical collections, and an illustration, by Messrs. W. E. 

 Hoyle and H. Bolton, of the application of the system of" fractional " 

 cataloguing to Palaeozoic fossils. 



Dr. H. O. Forbes advocates the centralisation of type-specimens 

 in London, Edinburgh and Dublin. There is much to be said for 



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