MUSEUM ORGANISATION 



been the difficulties, real or imaginary, in illustrating them 

 which have excluded such subjects as astronomy, physics, 

 chemistry, and physiology from occupying departments in our 

 National Natural History Museum, while allowing the intro- 

 duction of their sister sciences, mineralogy, geology, botany, 

 and zoology. 



Though the experimental sciences and those which deal 

 with the laws which govern the universe, rather than with the 

 materials of which it is composed, have not hitherto greatly 

 called forth the collector's instinct, or depended upon museums 

 for their illustration, yet the great advantages of collections of 

 the various instruments by means of which these sciences are 

 pursued, and of examples of the methods by which they are 

 taught, are yearly becoming more manifest. Museums of 

 scientific apparatus now form portions of every well-equipped 

 educational establishment, and under the auspices of the Science 

 and Art Department at South Kensington a national collection 

 illustrating those branches of natural history science which have 

 escaped recognition in the British Museum is assuming a 

 magnitude and importance which brings the question of 

 properly housing and displaying it urgently to the front. 



Anomalies such as these are certain to occur in the present 

 almost infantile though rapidly progressive state of science. 

 It may be taken for granted that no scientific institution of 

 any complexity of organisation can be, except at the moment 

 of its birth, abreast of the most modern views of the subject, 

 especially in the dividing lines between, and the proportional 

 representation of, the various branches of knowledge which it 

 includes. 



The necessity for subdivisions in the study of science is 

 continually becoming more apparent as the knowledge of the 

 details of each subject multiplies without corresponding increase 

 in the power of the human mind to grasp and deal with them, 

 and the dividing lines not only become sharper, but as 

 knowledge advances they frequently require revision. It 

 might be supposed that such revision would adjust itself to the 

 direction taken by the natural development of the relations of 

 the different branches of science, and the truer conceptions 

 entertained of such relations. But this is not always so. 



