284 Dr. J. E. Gray on Museums and their Uses. 



from so doing by the conviction that, in order to be of any real 

 utility, such a Report should be of much greater length and fulness 

 of detail than the time at our disposal would fairly admit for the 

 reading, or than the few weeks which have elapsed since I was re- 

 quested to undertake the office would allow of my preparing. This 

 is, however, the less to be regretted, inasmuch as, in the course of 

 each year, a body of laborious and talented German professors are in 

 the habit of preparing a very full and complete Report of this nature 

 for the Berlin ' Archives of Natural History,' after a plan similar to 

 that which I myself commenced, more than forty years ago, in 

 Thomson's 'Annals of Philosophy.' I have therefore abandoned all 

 intention of attempting such a review, and proceed at once to speak 

 of subjects having a more general bearing upon the interests of our 

 science. 



I should wish to say a few words on the subject of Public Museums. 

 It may be well imagined that, having the whole of my life been iu- 

 timately connected with the management of what I believe to be at 

 the present day the most important zoological museum in the world, 

 it is a subject that has long and deeply occupied my thoughts ; and 

 it will also be readily believed that it is only after serious and pro- 

 longed consideration I have come to the conclusion that the phm 

 hitherto i)ursued in their arrangement has rendered them less useful 

 to science and less interesting to the public at large than they might 

 have been made under a different system. Let us consider the pur- 

 poses for which such a museum is established. 



These are two : 1st, the diffusion of instruction and rational 

 amusement among the mass of the people ; and 2nd, to afford the 

 scientific student every possible means of examining and studying 

 the specimens of which the museum consists. Now, it appears 

 to me that, in the desire to combine these two objects, which are 

 essentially distinct, the first object, namely the general instruction 

 of the people, has been to a great extent lost sight of and sacrificed 

 to the second, without any corresponding advantage to the latter, 

 because the system itself has been thoroughly erroneous. The 

 curators of large museums have naturally, and, perhaps, properly, 

 been men more deeply devoted to scientific study than interested in 

 elementary instruction, and they have consequently done what they 

 thought best for the promotion of science by accumulating and 

 exhibiting on the shelves or in the open cases of the museum every 

 specimen which they possess, without considering that by so doing 

 they were overwhelming the general visitor with a mass of unintelli- 

 gible objects, and at the same time rendering their attentive study 

 by the man of science more difficult and onerous than if they had 

 been brought into a smaller space and in a more available condition. 



What the largest class of visitors, the general public, want, is a 

 collection of the more interesting objects so arranged as to afford the 

 greatest possible amount of information in a moderate space, and to 

 be obtained, as it were, at a glance. On the other hand, the scientific 

 student requires to have under his eyes and in his hands the most 



