II AMERICAN MUSEUMS 21 



This it will be seen is very different from what is 

 usually considered the proper style of building for a great 

 museum, which is characterized by lofty halls, magnificent 

 staircases, and enormous galleries ; but however grand 

 and effective architecturally these may be, they are quite 

 unsuited to the essential purposes for which a museum 

 is constructed. Let us consider in the first place the 

 supply of well-lighted cases on which the efficiency of a 

 museum so much depends. A large gallery, such as is 

 often seen in great museums, may be 200 feet long and 

 50 feet wide, giving 500 feet of wall. But if this is 

 divided into five rooms, each 40 feet wide by 50 feet long, 

 we shall have 900 feet of wall, the greater part of which, 

 being opposite the windows and comparatively near to 

 them, will be far better lighted. But the vast gallery 

 must be proportionately lofty and would suffice for two 

 floors of moderately sized rooms, so that, after allowing 

 for the greater number of doors and windows in the 

 smaller rooms, we have an economy of space of at least 

 three to one in favour of the small-room plan, with an 

 even greater proportionate saving of expense, owing to the 

 smaller scale of all the ornaments and fittings. 



But the chief advantage of this style of building 

 consists in the facilities which it offers for subdivision and 

 isolation of special groups of objects, and their arrange- 

 ment so as to illustrate many of the most interesting and 

 instructive problems of natural history. The galleries of 

 a large museum, crowded with specimens arranged in a 

 single series throughout the whole animal kingdom, con- 

 fuse and distract the observer. As Professor Alexander 

 Agassiz well says in one of his admirable reports as 

 curator : 



" The great defect of museums in general is the immense number 

 of articles exhibited compared with the small space taken to explain 

 what is shown. The visitor stands before a case which may be 

 exquisitely arranged and the specimens carefully labelled, yet he 

 does not know, and has no means of finding out, why that case is 

 filled as it is ; nothing tells him the purpose for which it is there. 

 The use of general labels and a small number of specimens properly 

 selected to illustrate the labels, would go far towards making a 

 museum intelligible, not only to the average visitor, but often to the 



