HOW TO START A MUSEUM. 43 



objects of the same general kind; and in connection 

 therewith, other objects naturally grouped with them. 

 To illustrate, suppose a tree-collection. If you beg-in with 

 the chestnut, you might get a piece of the wood, showing 

 the grain; then you would group about this specimens of- 

 the chestnut bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit. You would 

 add all the varieties of moss that grow on the tree, all 

 insects that frequent and injure it, perhaps a sketch of 

 the entire tree, and whatever else you might conceive to 

 be naturally connected with it. 



One variety of group-collecting might be called a 

 Development-collection, by which I mean a c611ection 

 that shows different stages of g'rowth. If you wished to 

 show the progress in methods of lighting, you could ar- 

 range a series containing a pine-knot, a rush-light, tallow 

 dip, wax taper, whale-oil lamp, fluid lamp, kerosene lamp, 

 gas-fixtures, and the arc and incandescent electric lights. 

 Or to illustrate the life-history of an insect, you could 

 have a series of specimens beginning with the egg, and 

 continued through the various forms of the caterpillar 

 after its moultings, thei cocoon and chrysalis, to the per- 

 fect itnayo. 



So, with a plant, an interesting group would repre- 

 sent its growth from seed to plumule, and through the 

 succeeding daily forms to bud and flower and fruit, and 

 back again to seed. 



Another variety of group-col lection shows the sev- 

 eral stages in the manufacture of common substances. 

 Beginning with the cotton-boll, you would have the 

 ginned cotton, the thread, the various kinds of fabrics 

 that are woven, from it; starting again with the stalk 

 and flower of flax, you would have the soft, inner, fibrous 

 bark, the linen thread, linen and paper made therefrom, 

 also the seeds, and linseed-oil pressed out of them, the 



