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ON THE OBJECTS AND MANAGEMEA^T OF PROVINCIAL 

 MUSEUMS. 



BY THE HONOEART SECEETART. 



Although every intelligent person knows more or less what these 

 institutions are, and what they oiight to be, there is probably no 

 subject, connected with the modem means of education in natural 

 science, concerning which so much misconception or ignorance is 

 manifested and tolerated as in the Management and Objects of oui- 

 Provincial Museums. The majority of them throughout England 

 present such examples of helpless misdirection and incapacity as 

 could not be paralleled elsewhere in Europe. Some noteworthy ex- 

 ceptions there are, as at Ipswich, Ludlow, and elsewhere; and in 

 some parts of our own county, an intelligent spii-it has of late been 

 shewn. The municipal aiithorities at Folkestone have not only 

 consigned their Museum to the care of the Natural Histoiy Society 

 of that place, but have given besides some pecuniary aid, while the 

 apartments are now gratuitously available for the scientific meetings. 

 At our gi-eat Universities, too, such judicious and honest activity 

 has prevailed as is beyond all praise and puts them out of the pale of 

 stHctures applicable to other qiiarters. And no wonder, seeing that 

 at Oxford and Cambridge competent and eminent men are at work, 

 and not at all disposed to admit of the inciibus of meddling and 

 tncompetent persons. But generally the managers or guardians of 

 chose Local Museums that are supported by public rates are precisely 

 if this iinfit class, and seem to have no more notion of their charge 

 than as mere curiosity shops ; and even display less intelligence than 

 is shewn in such shops, where the cupidity or shrewdness of the 

 dealer induces him at least to take due care of, and give a local 

 habitation and a name to, his wares. But in the Provincial Museums 

 even this care and tittle of information is withheld, and the visitors 

 are left to do the best they can amid the siirrounding bewilder- 

 ment. This is commonly made up of a most puzzling jiimble of 

 heterogeneous miscellanies, aiTanged or rather scattered with an 

 equally sovereign contempt for the convenience or instruction of the 

 public, and indeed all in such admired disorder as may most plainly 

 showhowChaos is comeagain and Confusion canmakehismastei-piece, 

 and how every specimen added to the heap only tends to increase or 

 perpetuate the miserable derangement. It looks as if the presiding 

 local genius had set his wits to work in order to prove how much 

 time and money might be most effectually expended with the least 

 profit to a knowledge of the natural history, or any history, of the 



