12 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



hardly be shown with any approach to completeness in a 

 Popular Museum ; and many of these objects occupy 

 space quite disproportionate to their intrinsic interest or 

 scientific value. They could in most cases be sufficiently 

 indicated by drawings or models. 



Situation and Plan of Museum. 



The museum here sketched, beginning with illustrations 

 of the earth and its component minerals, passing through 

 the whole vegetable and animal kingdoms, and culminating 

 in the highest art-products of civilized man, would combine 

 a very wide range of objects with a clearly limited scheme, 

 and would, I believe, well answer to the definition of a 

 Typical Museum of Natural History. Although of such 

 wide scope, it need not necessarily occupy a very large 

 space ; and I believe it might be instructively carried out 

 in a building no larger than is devoted to many local 

 museums. This brings me to say a few words on the kind 

 of building best adapted to such an institution as is here 

 sketched out. 



In his President's address to the British Association 

 at Norwich, Sir Joseph Hooker made some admirable 

 remarks on the situation of museums. He observed : 



4 ' Much of the utility of museums depends on two conditions 

 often strangely overlooked, viz. their situation, and their lighting 

 and interior arrangements. The provincial museum is too often 

 huddled away almost out of sight, in a dark, crowded, dirty 

 thoroughfare, where it pays dear for ground rent, rates, and taxes, 

 and cannot be extended. Such localities are frequented by the 

 townspeople only when on business, and when they consequently 

 have no time for sight seeing. In the evening, or on holidays, when 

 they would visit the museum, they naturally prefer the outskirts of 

 the town to its centre. . . . The museum should be in an open 

 grassed square or park, planted with trees, in the town or its out- 

 skirts ; a main object being to secure cleanliness, a cheerful aspect, 

 and space for extension. Now, vegetation is the best interceptor 

 of dust, which is injurious to the specimens as well as unsightly, 

 whilst a cheerful aspect, and grass and trees, will attract visitors, 

 and especially families and schools." 



Evidently, then, the proper place for the museum is the 

 centre of the park or public garden. This furnishes the 

 largest and cleanest open space, the best light, the purest 



