PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—-SECTION D. 105 
I believe, therefore, that museums, open to the general public, 
should be arranged solely with reference to their wants. Such 
museums will, however, be available to all, for the specialist will 
be at home in the museum, however it be arranged. Two rules, 
at least, it seems to me, should guide us in preparing the part of 
the museum intended for the general public. (1) It must not be 
assumed that the visitor possesses any knowledge of the objects 
exhibited. The information should be conveyed by the arrange- 
ment or grouping of the objects, and, where this is not possible, by 
an ample system of descriptions written in plain English. (2) We 
must represent an animal as a living being; and in such a way as 
to illustrate the working of the laws of nature. To do this we 
must endeavour to place it in surroundings resembling those in 
which it naturally lives. 
This subject of museum reform is no new-fangled ohne. Nearly 
twenty-six years ago Gray drew the attention of the British 
Association to the need of improvement in museums, and expressed 
views which do not greatly differ from those expressed by Pro- 
fessor Flower, as the president of the British Association, at the 
meeting held last September at Newcastle. There is one point in 
Professor Flower’s address which is especially noteworthy. He 
says that “what a museum depends upon most for its success and 
usefulness is not its buildings, not its cases, not even its speci- 
mens, but its curator. He and his staff are the life and soul of 
the institution, upon whom its whole value depends ; and yet in 
many—I may say in most—of our institutions they are the last 
to be thought of.” 
If the public museum is to be a means of popular education, it 
follows that its curators must be teachers of the people—that 
they must possess the gift of popular exposition. The functions 
of the curator of a museum are held by some to be those of a 
caretaker, just sufficiently skilled to name and catalogue the objects 
under his charge. But in the larger museums it is expected that 
the curator will use the materials accumulated there for the 
purpose of advancing knowledge. Now, it is generally believed 
by those who have had opportunities for observation that the 
combination of teaching with research in the professorial chairs 
has led to the most successful results in European universities ; 
and I venture to think that the endeavour to set forth and 
illustrate the fundamental Jaws of nature by the arrangement and 
description of a popular museum would be an actual assistance to 
the curators in their work of research. Some progress is being 
made in a few English museums, as at South Kensington, towards 
improving their condition, but though the principle on which the 
much-needed reform is to be carried out may be clear enough, 
there is much to be done in working out the details of the scheme. 
Though this work naturally falls to the curators, it is yet a work 
of such magnitude, and one so obviously calculated to advance 
