MUSEUMS 291 



less complete of course than the museum made and arranged 

 by grown-up people, may be much more stimulating and 

 more useful educationally. I can recommend also the 

 temporary museum, made to illustrate a course of study 

 actually in progress at the time. There need be no high 

 standard of excellence for the admission of objects, and 

 the naming and classification may be rough ; the great 

 thing is to enlist the hearty co-operation of many pupils. 



I do not expect great results from lectures delivered in 

 front of the museum-cases, though they may be useful 

 and stimulating at times. It has more than once happened 

 to me to get a valuable lesson by accompanying a master 

 of zoological science round a museum, and I recollect with 

 keen pleasure a little lecture on Roman busts at the British 

 Museum which I was fortunate enough to overhear. There 

 is no method so poor but that it can be vivified by a 

 powerful teacher. 



The museum can be no substitute for the class-lesson, 

 and its most costly treasures cannot replace the living 

 plant or animal as the matter to be chiefly studied. If 

 this is conceded, I have no further contention with the 

 advocates of instruction in museums. We shall agree 

 that the herbarium must not hinder us from studying 

 the early purple orchis, growing in the pasture with its 

 pollen-masses ready to be removed, that the cabinet of 

 fossils must not take the place of the fossil fresh chipped 

 out of the quarry, and studied together with the limestone 

 in which it has lain so long. 



In general, the museum meets the wants, not of young 

 pupils who are about to receive first lessons in the observa- 

 tion and interpretation of nature, but of the few who have 

 already carried their studies beyond the elementary stage. 

 It is a place for the storage of exact and detailed know- 

 ledge. 



I conclude therefore that while the usefulness of the 

 museum in elementary instruction is limited, it is a most 

 valuable and indispensable aid to the studies of the 



