iv SCHOOL MUSEUMS 59 



ordinary life, especially their school life, and to teach them 

 some of the common objects they see around them. 



The specimens of the first class should be all good of their 

 kind, carefully prepared and displayed, and fully labelled. 

 They should also be so arranged that they can be seen and 

 studied without being removed from their position in the case 

 or in any way disturbed or damaged. It would be best that 

 they should never be taken out of the museum, but if it is 

 necessary to remove them for the purpose of demonstration at 

 lectures or classes, special provision should be made by which 

 a whole tray or case can be moved together, with due precautions 

 against disturbing the individual specimens. As a rule, the 

 teachers should either bring the classes into the museum for 

 demonstrations, or they should rely upon a different set of 

 specimens kept in store in the classrooms, and only brought 

 out when required, and which may be handled and examined 

 without fear of injury. Keally good permanent preparations 

 may be looked at, but not touched except by very skilled hands. 



In zoology the collection should consist of illustrations of 

 the principal modifications of animal forms, living and extinct, 

 a few selected typical examples of each being given, showing 

 the anatomy and development as well as the external form. 

 The series now in the course of arrangement in the Central Hall 

 of the Natural History branch of the British Museum in the 

 Cromwell Koad may, as far as it is complete, be taken as a 

 guide, but for a school museum it will not be necessary to enter 

 so fully into detail as in that series. 



In botany there should be a general morphological collection, 

 showing the main modifications of the different organs in the 

 greater groups into which the vegetable kingdom is divided, 

 and illustrating the terms used in describing these modifications. 

 Such a collection may also be seen (although still far from 

 complete) in the same institution. 



For a teaching collection of minerals, an admirable model 

 has for several years past been exhibited in the Mineralogical 

 Gallery of the Natural History Museum, being, in fact, the 

 various paragraphs of Mr. Fletcher's Introduction to the, Study 

 of Minerals cut up, and with each statement illustrated by 

 a choice specimen. 



