in CURATORSHIP OF MUSEUMS 55 



universal use, with little change for thousands of years, now 

 rapidly disappearing in many districts ; or the stocks, once 

 such an important social institution in rural life, but of 

 which I know now only one in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury, 

 that which still remains in the picturesque village of 

 Dinton. Specimens of all these, and many others which will 

 readily suggest themselves, should be preserved in every local 

 museum. 



Then again, the natural history, the birds, the butterflies, 

 the wild flowers, and the fossils and minerals of the neighbour- 

 hood, so arranged and named that any one can identify every 

 creature or plant he may chance to meet with in his walk, are 

 essential features in a local museum. 



But now let me give a necessary warning. There are 

 museums and museums. A good one well arranged, and well 

 kept, clean, neat, and attractive, may be the means of con- 

 veying instruction and giving interest and pleasure to the 

 lives of thousands of our fellow-creatures. But such museums 

 do not grow of themselves ; money, time, knowledge, and 

 loving and sympathetic care must be expended upon them, 

 both in their foundation and their maintenance, and unless 

 all these can be provided for with tolerable certainty, it is 

 useless to begin. Voluntary assistance is, no doubt, often 

 valuable. There are many splendid examples of what it may 

 do in country museums, but it can never be depended on for 

 any long continuance. Death or removals, flagging zeal, and 

 other causes tell severely in the long run against this resource. 

 A museum must have an endowment adequate to defray its 

 expenses, and especially to ensure the staff of intelligent, 

 educated, and paid curators required to maintain it in a state 

 of efficiency. You might as well build a church and expect 

 it to perform the duties required of it without a minister, 

 or a school without a schoolmaster, or a garden without a 

 gardener, as to build a museum and not provide a competent 

 staff to take care of it. 



It is not the objects placed in a museum that constitute 

 its value, so much as the method in which they are displayed, 

 and the use made of them for the purpose of instruction. 



The scope of the museum should be strictly denned and 



