NOT FOR CHILDREN BUT FOR ADULTS 325 



for children, which exists, I am sorry to say, even in 

 regard to so splendid and expensive a display of wonderful 

 things as that to be seen at the Natural History Museum, 

 is due to the bad tradition justified by the condition of 

 other museums, where a child may enjoy being astonished, 

 but a grown-up person can take in nothing which appeals 

 to the intelligence. A new city museum is, it is reported, 

 to be established at Birmingham. We may hope that it 

 will not contain the usual unsatisfactory series of badly 

 stuffed exotic animals, birds, and reptiles, and trophies of 

 South Sea islanders' clubs and spears. It should contain 

 first-rate specimens of the living and extinct fauna of 

 Warwickshire, and specimens of foreign animals carefully 

 selected to compare with them and throw light on them ; 

 also local prehistoric and antiquarian specimens, illus- 

 trated by comparison with the work of savage and remote 

 races. The excellent suggestion has been made that it 

 should contain specimens of the insect-pests of Warwick- 

 shire crops. It should also exhibit the minerals from which 

 the manufactories of Birmingham draw their metals, and 

 should show the stages of their preparation. It should 

 appeal, not to the boys and girls of Birmingham in the 

 first place, but to the adults, and to do this it should be 

 placed under the care of a really first-rate and ingenious 

 man, who might possibly do for the Birmingham Museum 

 what skilful arrangement and sound knowledge have done 

 for its Art Gallery an institution intended to appeal not 

 to school children, but to the reasonable adult population 

 of the city. 



The principle of exhibiting permanently in public gal- 

 leries a portion of our great national collections and of 

 preserving another and larger portion in smaller rooms, 

 where they can be more closely but not less carefully 

 disposed and brought out into perfect light and position 

 when required, should be applied to collections of pottery, 



