320 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov.. 



account for the unhappy and dejected look of so many geological 

 surveyors when not engaged in field-work. 



There is literally no reason except a sentimental one why the 

 museum in Jermyn Street should continue to exist where it is. The 

 site, being valuable, would, if sold, easily realise enough to build 

 another wing to the great Museum of Natural History at South 

 Kensington, where the collections could be suitably housed and 

 accommodated, and I know some men, wiser than myself and quite 

 as disinterested, who think with me. The removal of the collections 

 is, hov^rever, not all that is required. The museum itself ought to be 

 entirely revolutionised. It contains very heterogeneous and dis- 

 cordant collections. The practical science of mining, which is 

 largely an ai't, together with the various arts supposed to be 

 connected with the mineral products of the earth, are all illustrated 

 in a most confusing way. Because a potter needs clay to model his 

 pots with, we have in the museum, not only different kinds of clay, 

 but illustrations of the various processes of the potter's art, with 

 special and valuable collections of different kinds of pottery, e.g., a 

 small but fine collection of Majolica, a very fine one of Roman 

 pottery from Colchester, the finest collection of Staffordshire ware in 

 the country, and a very large collection of EngHsh porcelain. What 

 has all this to do with geology ? In the same way, but not to the 

 same extent, the art of the metallurgist, of the polisher and engraver 

 of precious stones, and every conceivable art dealing with things 

 earthy and stony are here illustrated. Why, then, should not all the 

 arts under heaven be taught in this museum, including that of the 

 chiropodist, for are not corns and bunions the remote results of 

 walking in fashionable boots on stones ? The incongruous exhibits 

 have no doubt come there, some by accident and some by design, but 

 they ought not to remain any longer. There was a time not long ago 

 when in no museum in England was the art of the potter illustrated 

 at all. Hence it was useful to have some bourne where such 

 collections might eventually rest in peace, dust, and neglect, until 

 better times should come. Now, things are very different. Such 

 collections exist, well exhibited and arranged, at the British Museum 

 and at the South Kensington Museum ; thither things of the same 

 kind, now buried and lost in Jermyn Street, where they are quite out 

 of place, should be transferred, and with them should go to the 

 scientific department of the latter museum all the specimens 

 exhibiting, not the science of geology, but the applied arts ultimately 

 dependent on the miner, the metal-worker, and others. Let us have 

 these arts adequately illustrated, by all means, but let them be taught 

 in their proper place in the museum of applied science, and not in that 

 where the evolution and history of the earth are illustrated. The 

 works of man and the works of nature belong to different spheres of 

 human study, and it must be equally confusing to the student and to 

 the pleasure-seeker to mix them up and to bring into unfair com- 



