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Xational Museums, to sec them restricted to certain specified 

 objects, and so kept within manageable limits. It should be 

 remembered tliat for Museums to be of any real value, the 

 collections must be properly arranged in a building of sufficient 

 size to show them to advantage. Unless this can be done, — 

 unless, too, there are funds for keeping rp the oollections after 

 they have been acquired, which can only be efficiently undertaken 

 by a paid curator, competent to superintend, and able to give his 

 whole time to the Museum, space and money are alike tlu'own 

 away in vainlj' attempting more than our resources allow; whereas, 

 on the contrary, by confining ourselves to what we might do, and 

 do well,— and, moreover, as regards a collection of the productions 

 of our own neighbourhood, ought to do, — our Museum may be of 

 the greatest possible utility for the advancement of science. 



And it is satisfactory to think that the establishment of 

 provincial Museums has kept pace ivith the increased interest taken 

 of late years in the natural sciences. As I remarked before, few 

 towns are now without a Museum of some kind. If these institu- 

 tutions are not always faultless in principle and arrangement, still 

 there are many deserving high commendation fi'om the care and 

 attention that has been bestoAved upon them. Such Museums 

 have undoubtedly had an influence in disseminating a taste for 

 Natural History, and to them we must especially look for what 

 remains to be done toAvards completing our knowledge of the 

 Natural History of these Islands. To the middling and to the 

 lower classes, and to young persons generally, JMuseums offer great 

 attractions ; and if, in addition to the rational amusement they 

 afford, they serve, by a well-ordered arrangement of their contents 

 and by a judicious labelling of the specimens, to convey instruction 

 and useful information to the mind, they will assist in raising the 

 intellectual standard of the age, and tend powerfully to do away 

 with the gross ignorance still so prevalent in some districts. It is 

 ignorance of the true habits of animals that encourages that 

 ■wholesale destruction of them, which of late has been so prom- 



