44 MODERN MUSEUMS n 



connection. Thus the public collections, the reserve collections, 

 and the officers in charge, are in each section of the museum 

 brought into close relation a most advantageous arrangement, 

 and one greatly facilitating the new museum idea. The 

 only drawback is that these rooms, occupying the inner side of 

 the quadrangular range of galleries, are necessarily small, and, 

 as the collections grow, will be found insufficient for the 

 purpose. This has, in fact, already proved to be the case in 

 several departments, and a remedy has been found by devoting 

 the whole upper story of the building to the reserve collections 

 of insects, shells, and plants, and the working library of the 

 institution, an arrangement which gives excellent accom- 

 modation for these important departments, at all events for the 

 present. A great difficulty will, however, arise in the future 

 owing to the building being externally architecturally complete 

 and visible on all four sides from the public grounds in which 

 it stands ; it therefore admits of no extension, and the public 

 galleries already contain as many specimens as can possibly 

 be placed in them with any advantage. These are in most 

 sections, especially the invertebrata, displayed in an extremely 

 tasteful and instructive manner, but the series is by no means 

 over-large for a national museum. The limitation of space is 

 partly due to the somewhat singular division which has been 

 made between the art and the natural history collections. 

 Instead of taking the dividing line adopted at the British 

 Museum between specimens in a state of nature and those 

 fashioned by man's hand, the pictures, the splendid collection 

 of European mediaeval armour, the classical and Egyptian 

 antiquities, are treated as works of art ; but the so-called 

 ethnological collection, containing the specimens of Mexican, 

 Peruvian, Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian, African, and pre- 

 historic European art, are placed in the Natural History 

 Museum, taking up a large portion of the space which the 

 curators of the zoological, mineralogical, and geological depart- 

 ments hoped to have had at their disposal for the display of 

 their specimens. Whether room could have been found for them 

 in the Art Museum or not, I cannot say ; but certainly their 

 actual position is incongruous, and it is difficult to understand 

 why a Peruvian mummy should find its place in a building 



