308 DR. J. D. HOOKER’S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
schoolmasters and mistresses trained to teach these subjects; and many more 
years before either provincial or private schools will be supplied with such il- 
lustrative specimens as are essential for the teacher’s purposes. 
* Confining myself to the consideration of provincial and local museums, and 
of their allies, the fiiptions of those organs, and other matters relating to their 
habits, uses, and place in the economy of nature. Such an arrangement has 
not been carried out in any museum known to me, though partially attained 
in that of Ipswich ; it requires some space, many pictorial illustrations, mag- 
nified views of the smaller organs and their structure, and copious legible de- 
scriptive labels, and it should not contain a single specimen more than is 
wanted. The other requirements of a provincial museum are, complete collec- 
tions of the plants and animals of the province, which should be kept entirely 
: u E 
strangely overlooked, viz. their situation and their lighting and interior ar- 
rangements. e provincial museum is too often huddled away almost out of 
sight ina dark, crowded, and dirty thoroughfare, where it pays dear for ground- 
rents, rates, and taxes, and cannot be extended; the object, apparently, being 
to catch country people on market days. Such localities are frequented by the 
townspeople only when on business, and w they consequently have no 
time for sight-seeing the evening, or on holidays, when they could visit 
the museum, they naturally prefer si outskirts of the town to its centre, The 
a cheerful aspect, and grass and trees, will attract visitors, and especially fami- 
lies and schools. If the external accessorics of provincial museums are bad, 
the internal are often worse; the rooms are usually lighted by windows on one 
side only, so that the cases between the walls are dark, and those opposite the 
visitor stands in his own li provincial museums, when space 1s an 
object, there is no better plan than rectangular long rooms, with o i 
dows on each side, and buttress cases projecting into the room between each 
s. This arrangem mbines economy of space with perfect 
illumination, and affords facilities for classification. Upon this plan the large 
