BOYS' MUSEUMS 1 



IT is a strange and interesting fact in human nature that 

 among thousands of boys who do not take the slightest 

 interest in anything pertaining to what is commonly called 

 " Natural History," there are here and there, at all events 

 among all cultivated nations, some few to whom it is an 

 absorbing passion, affording more delight than anything else 

 in life. Very often this is only a passing phase, affecting 

 boys chiefly between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and 

 then entirely dying away, but with some it persists through 

 life, materially modifying the whole course of existence. This 

 curious condition of mind, or " idiosyncrasy " as physicians call 

 it, is not confined to particular races or nations ; the Japanese 

 have it as well as Europeans and Americans. Nor is it 

 limited to any particular position in the social or educational 

 scale. No one could have had it in a more intense form than the 

 poor Scotch shoemaker, Thomas Edward, child of some of the 

 humblest people of tne land, whose biography by Samuel Smiles 

 I presume all readers of this magazine are acquainted with. 

 On the other hand, there have been few keener naturalists and 

 collectors than the late Crown Prince Eudolf of Austria, and 

 in England at the present time few, if any, can yield in this 

 respect to the heir of the wealthy house of Eothschild, the 

 owner of the finest private zoological museum in the world. 



One great peculiarity of this condition of mind is that, 

 though it does occasionally run in families, more often it 

 arises as it were spontaneously in one member of a family, 



1 Published under the title of "Natural History as a Vocation," in CTiambers's 

 Journal, 10th April 1897. 



