THE FORMATION OF LOCAL MUSEUMS. 35 



unwise to check the enthusiasm of the givers by rejecting, 

 such as clubs from the South-sea Islands and walrus-tusks 

 from the North Pole, Egyptian dried crocodiles, and Australian 

 boomerangs, still a room full of these is not a museum worthy 

 of the name, and it would be the duty of the Committee to 

 eliminate the hodge-podge element as speedily as possible. 



Now the Educational part of a museum need not be purely 

 local, in fact, it cannot be. I was in Southampton a few 

 weeks back, and looked in at the Hartley Institute, where 

 there is the commencement of a very good museum, and the 

 educational part struck me much. A series, I take this as an 

 example, but it will explain what I mean, of the skeletons of 

 vertebrate animals arrang^ed in an ascending scale, beginning 

 with the lower forms, snakes, lizards, and fish, and ending 

 at the top of the tree, with a picture ox stuffed specimen of the 

 complete animal, and a short explanation of how this particular 

 vertebrate animal differed from others, and what were the 

 chief points worth notice in the skeleton, gave one in a few 

 minutes a better notion of comparative anatomy, so far as the 

 vertebrates are concerned, than a whole term of lectures, a 

 whole year of rambles, or a whole Bloomsbury of miscella- 

 neous articles. In fact the educational part of the Museum 

 ought to consist of a series of sets of typical specimens, 

 recent and fossil, of each of the great families of animal and 

 vegetable life, duly arranged and descriptively labelled, so 

 as to tell at sight how this specimen differed from that, and 

 what there was characteristic in each. 



Don't I wish I may get it ? Of course I do, though I don't 

 think it likely, But at the same time we might make a 

 beginning, and the great advantage is that in this sort of 

 thing we may have fifty beginnings, all in the middle, and 

 each good and useful in itself. So much for the Educational 

 Museum. 



Next as to the Local. This to be complete ought to represent 

 in miniature the district covered by the Folkestone Natural 

 History Society, so far as the Natural History is concerned. 

 There ought to be complete and well-arranged collections of 

 our local insects, birds, reptiles, plants, and all that is con- 

 tained in the very wide range of investigation opened up to 

 us by our field days. This too can be done by fifty people at 

 once, eaeh working on his own responsibility, and selecting 



