108 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



but valueless to the general teacher. The cooperative as- 

 sociation of school and museum in New York, Chica^'o, 

 Milwaukee, and some other cities, augers well for the fu- 

 ture of the museum in finding its true place in the edu- 

 cational system of the present age. 



In a recent article on the "Contribution of Museums to 

 Public School Education," Mr. Peter A. Mortenson, Su- 

 perintendent of Public Schools of Chicago, says: "The 

 value of museum material as a factor in reinforcing 

 school instruction has, no doubt, been recognized gen- 

 erally enough, but the difficulty lying in the way of its 

 wider utilization has been the failure to find the museum 

 material so organized that it would appeal to the dynamic 

 interests of the children and at the same time portray 

 the life that it was collected to represent." The larger 

 museums, and even some of the smaller museums presid- 

 ed over by far-sighted curators, ar^e removing this un- 

 favorable criticism, and are preparing some of their ex- 

 hibits to meet the requirements of the teacher of the 

 grade schools. 



That the museum is also of value in reinforcing in- 

 struction in the imiversities and other higher institu- 

 tions of learning seems equally certain, supplementing by 

 the exhibits the material ' used in the classroom and 

 laboratory, the larger value being in the coordination of 

 all the material which may have been seen in the class- 

 room only as isolated parts of the whole subject. This 

 value of museum material has been recognized for many 

 years, and almost every college and university has its 

 museum, even though it be a small one. Of late years 

 some of the universities have drifted away from the use 

 of the museum; hence the unsatisfactory condition of 

 much of the material in many university collections and 

 the general poor opinion of most of such collections 

 among museum men. I wish to indicate, briefly, some of 

 the ways in whicli the museum may be useful in supple- 

 menting the general courses given in a university. 



The modem teaching of geography consists not so 

 much of political boundary lines, as of peoples, indus- 

 tries, natural resources, and physical features. And here 



