322 NATURAL SCIENCE. 



July, 



museums are in cities that are the capitals of distinct nations, and the 

 local fields they have to illustrate are wider and less explored, while 

 race patriotism is a stronger stimulus than county feeling. Munici- 

 pal rivalry in this country may occasionally be keen, but the 

 stimulating jealousy of the Italian cities cannot be rivalled elsewhere 

 on this side of the Atlantic. 



But allowing most generously for all this, there yet remains much 

 that is not due to any such general cause. If we compare the amount 

 of research turned out of the smaller German museums, with 

 that executed by our own curators, many of whom have better 

 libraries and material, we cannot but feel that a certain amount of 

 blame rests with them. No doubt the provincial curators are 

 burdened with many trivial duties, and so long as the few good 

 museum appointments, such as those on the staff of officers of the 

 Natural History Museum, are filled by promotion within that building, 

 there are few chances of promotion, and little encouragement 

 to originality or research. The provincial museums too often 

 have no permanent scientific curator, and are entrusted either to 

 volunteers or to men who have to look after them in the intervals of 

 teaching or library work. The result is that the museum is not 

 well kept, tablets get dusty, the labelling falls into arrears, and, as an 

 aspect of untidiness pervades the place, it loses whatever attractions 

 and educational value it may once have had. And this does not 

 apply only to the smaller provincial towns : it was the Oxford 

 Museum that an examination candidate once quoted as the authority 

 for the statement that no insect had more than five legs, while the 

 vast majority had only three. 



The moment we attempt to consider what remedy can be 

 found for this state of affairs, we are met by the initial difficulty as to 

 what is the real ideal of a museum. At present opinions are certainly 

 not settled as to whether museums are to be regarded as store- 

 houses of material or as illustrated text-books. The former was for 

 long allowed to hold the field, but during recent years the latter 

 theory, stimulated by the Index Collections at the Natural History 

 Museum, has steadily been gaining ground. The former is still held 

 in Germany, while the Americans have in some cases carried the 

 latter to the extremest limits, and the comparison of a German and 

 American museum clearly illustrates the difference between the two. 



The typical German provincial museum generally has an 

 entrance through a back courtyard, the exhibition rooms are crowded 

 with cases of different shapes and patterns, in which the greater 

 proportion of the collection is exposed to view, and so the visitor easily 

 finds the specimens that interest him. After sundry experiments the 

 right keys are found, and as soon as twenty years' dust has been removed 

 from the specimens he is able to set to work. But in the museums 

 of the new style everything is different ; the building is a handsome 

 modern structure surrounded by a grass plot that would do credit to 



