38 MODERN MUSEUMS 



what was then beginning to be felt by many who turned their 

 unbiassed attention to the subject, and it is the keynote of 

 nearly all the museum reform of recent date. During the 

 long discussion which followed, the new idea found powerful 

 advocates in Huxley, Hooker, Sclater, Wallace, and others ; 

 but Owen, whose official position made him the chief scientific 

 adviser in the construction of the new National Museum of 

 Natural History, never became reconciled to it, and, un- 

 fortunately, threw all the weight of his great authority into 

 the opposite scale. 



The method of application of this principle depends entirely 

 upon the general nature of the museum, whether that of a 

 nation, a town, a school, or a society or institution established 

 to cultivate some definite branch of knowledge. It is mainly 

 of national museums that I am speaking at present, and it is 

 only in national museums that the fulfilment of both functions 

 in fairly equal proportions can be expected. In almost all 

 other museums the diffusion of knowledge, or popular education, 

 will be the primary function ; and if the true principles of 

 arrangement of such museums be once grasped, this is a 

 function which can be carried out upon the largest or the 

 smallest, or any intermediate scale, according to the means of 

 the institution and the requirements of the locality. 



The collections for the advancement of science, on the other 

 hand, are of value mainly in proportion to their size, and no 

 museum at present existing has come anywhere near what 

 is required for the exhaustive study of natural history. If 

 any one were now to endeavour to write a complete mono- 

 graph of any family in the animal kingdom, he would search 

 in vain for materials for doing so, not only in any one 

 museum, but in all the museums in the world put together. 



Soon after the arrival in our National History Museum 

 of the great and carefully selected and labelled collection of 

 Indian birds, presented by Mr. A. 0. Hume, containing 

 upwards of 60,000 specimens, a well-known ornithologist 

 commenced the volumes devoted to birds in the excellent 

 series of manuals on the fauna of British India, edited by 

 Mr. Blanford. I am told that when he began the work, he 

 was seen sitting at his table rubbing his hands with delight 



