THE FUNCTIONS OF A LOCAL NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 21 
Fourthly, and in an ideal society with the command of sufficient 
funds, one of the most important objects to pursue would be the 
formation of a museum. But there are various types of museums, 
intended for different purposes. I am putting aside the old- 
fashioned museum, as it is not the object of anyone now to get 
together a miscellaneous jumble of odds and ends gathered from 
all the four quarters of the globe, and over which a suitable 
inscription would have been “Rubbish may be shot here.” 
There is first the great National Museum, which should contain 
not only as perfect a collection as possible of objects of art, 
archeology, manufactures, objects illustrating the manners and 
customs of different nations, specimens of minerals and rocks, and 
of all the orders of the two kingdoms of nature, both recent and 
fossil, store away for reference by students, but’also typical collec- 
tions of all groups, with full and accurate descriptions, exposed for 
the purposes of instruction. There is also that most useful form of 
museum called the Technical Museum, which contains specimens 
of the raw materials, and illustrations of all processes bearing on 
the staple industry of a town. But the museum of such a Society 
as ours would have much more limited aims. It should be 
strictly local in character, and however interesting and beautiful 
in themselves other things might be, I would rigorously exclude 
them. In it would be stored all local antiquities, both prehistoric 
and historic, drawings and photographs of old buildings, maps, 
geological sections, copies of old charters and old parish registers, 
of old houses and monuments, the coins of local mints ani trades- 
mens’ tokens, and all such objects of local interest. Not only 
should the archzology be illustrated, but also the rocks, animals, 
and plants, both recent and fossil ; in it every indigenous species 
finding place, and each specimen should be carefully labelled with 
all particulars as to its capture, etc., or at least bear a reference 
to a careful register which would be kept, so that any errors in the 
determination of a species could at any time be corrected, in fact, 
the specimens in the museum would be the authority for the lists 
published by the Society. The only exception I would make to 
this rule would be to place those types of species which may be 
