418 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
repository for the benefit of the professed student and specialist, 
but serve in an equal measure for the recreation of the whole 
mass of the people and for their instruction in the principles of 
Biology. This was the spirit in which he worked, and in the 
last years of his life he had the satisfaction of being able to say 
that there was no other collection in existence more accessible 
and more extensively used than the one under his charge. 
Iam encouraged to return to-day to the same subject, because 
T have daily the opportunity of observing that the public more and 
more comprehend the use of Museums, and that they appreciate 
any real improvements, however slight. Paragraphs, leaders, 
articles published in the public journals and periodicals, references 
made in speeches or addresses, questions put in the Houses of 
Parliament whenever an opportunity offers—all testify that the 
progress of Museums is watched with interest. Not long ago a 
Royal Commission entered deeply and minutely into the subject, 
and elicited a mass of evidence and information invaluable in 
itself, though you may differ from some of the conclusions and 
views expressed in their final report. Biological Science has 
made rapid strides: not only do we begin to understand better 
the relations of the varieties of living forms to each other, but 
the number of varieties themselves that have been made known 
has also been increased beyond all expectation, and the old 
repositories have everywhere been found too narrow to house 
the discoveries of the last forty years. ‘Therefore you find that 
the United States, Austria, Prussia and Saxony, Denmark and 
Holland, France and Great Britain have erected, or are building 
anew, their National Museums, not to mention the numerous 
smaller museums which are more or less exclusively devoted to 
some branch of Biological Science. 
The purposes for which Museums are formed are threefold: 
(1) to diffuse instruction among, and offer rational amusement to, 
the mass of the people; (2) to aid in the elementary study of 
Biology; and (3) to supply the professed student of Biology 
or the specialist with as complete materials for his scientific 
researches as can be obtained, and to preserve for future genera- 
tions the materials on which those researches have been based. 
Although every museum has, as it were, a physiognomy of its 
own, differing from the others in the degree in which it fulfils 
one or two or all three of those objects, we may divide museums 
; 
