STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



consider that objects of art are already widely spread, and 

 more or less accessible. Our great public buildings 

 contain their art-decorations. The houses of the wealthy 

 and the shops of our streets are full of art, and the artisan 

 has frequent opportunities of seeing them, while local 

 exhibitions of art are not uncommon, and will no doubt 

 be come more and more frequent. The very young and 

 the very ignorant would learn nothing in an art museum, 

 while they would certainly gain both knowledge and 

 pleasure in such an one as I am about to describe. 



A Typical Museum of Natural History should contain 

 a series of objects to illustrate all the sciences which treat 

 of the earth, nature, and man. These are — 1, Geography 

 and Geology; 2, Mineralogy; 3, Botany; 4, Zoology; 5, 

 Ethnology. I will briefly sketch what seems to be the 

 best mode of illustrating these sciences in a museum for 

 the people. 



Geography and Geology. — Some knowledge of the 

 earth and its structure is so essential a preliminary to any 

 acquaintance with natural history, and the working classes 

 have so few opportunities of seeing large maps, globes, or 

 models, that a good series of these should form a part of 

 the museum. In particular, relief-maps, models, and 

 maps to illustrate physical geography and geology, large 

 sections and diagrams, and large globes, should be so 

 exhibited that they could be conveniently examined and 

 studied in detail. 



The country around the museum should be shown on a 

 large scale by a model or relief-map, in which the undu- 

 lations of the ground and the hills, valleys, mountains 

 and streams should be shown on a natural scale of heights, 

 so as not to exaggerate the slopes to three or four 

 times their actual steepness, as is usually done. The 

 more important mountainous regions of our islands, as 

 well as some portions of the Alps and Himalayas, should 

 be shown in the same manner, and all on the same scale, 

 so as to exhibit their true relations to each other. Only 

 in this way can the erroneous ideas derived from maps on 

 different scales and models on an exaggerated vertical 

 scale, be counteracted. 



Geological maps and sections should also be exhibited ; 



