288 HOUSE, GARDEN, AND FIELD 



intervals, arrange them methodically, and study them 

 closely ? What more obvious than to be guided in the 

 choice of objects by experts, who give their whole time 

 to natural history ? The saving of time and thought is 

 immense. The teacher takes his pupils to visit a great 

 collection, selected with infinite pains and set out with 

 professional skill ; surely he will do more in this way than 

 if he makes a fresh beginning, and tries to arrange a little 

 collection of his own. 



The great public museum is perhaps too distant for 

 frequent visits, and then the school is fired with the 

 ambition of setting up collections of its own. The very 

 effort will be wholesome ; surely every one will co-operate 

 in building up a museum which shall be to the private 

 collections of the boys what the national museum is to 

 the little provincial museums. 



These are our expectations, and we get to work in good 

 spirits. It is easy to start a school-museum, and easy 

 to carry it through the early stages of its development. 

 Shells, fossils, birds' eggs and the like come in freely, 

 many of the specimens being drawn from private col- 

 lections which have ceased to fascinate, or have been 

 bequeathed to uninterested persons. When gratifying 

 progress has been made for some years, and a great array 

 of named specimens has been set out in due order, dis- 

 illusion sets in. It is discovered that the museum interests 

 very few persons, and is put, even by those few, to uses 

 which can hardly be called intellectual. Sometimes, for 

 instance, it is valued only as a means of getting the right 

 names put to the objects in a private collection without 

 the labour of classification. Even then the school-museum 

 may not have been entirely useless. Those who have 

 worked at arranging and classifying will probably be the 

 better for what they have done, but the school-generations 

 which inherit their labours will find in time that there 

 is little for them to do but admire, and admiration of 

 other people's work soon ceases to stimulate. 



