ADDRESS TO BIOLOGICAL SECTION, BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 419 
into three classes, viz.: (1) National; (2) Provincial; and (3) 
Strictly Educational Museums; a mode of division which may 
give to those of this assembly who are not biologists an idea of 
what we mean by the term “species.” The three kinds pass into 
each other, and there may be hybrids between them. 
The museum of the third class, the Strictly Educational insti- 
tutions, we find established chiefly in connection with universities, 
colleges, medical and science schools. Its principal object is to 
supply the materials for teaching and studying the elements and 
general outlines of Biology; it supplements, and is the most 
necessary help for, oral and practical instruction, which always 
ought to be combined with this kind of museum. The conserva- 
tion of objects is subservient to their immediate utility and 
unrestricted accessibility to the student. The collection is best 
limited to a selection of representatives of the various groups or 
“types,” arranged in strictly systematic order, and associated 
with preparations of such parts of their organisation as are most 
characteristic of the group. Collections of this kind I have seen 
arranged with the greatest ingenuity, furnishing the student with 
a series of demonstrations which correspond to the plan followed 
in some elementary text-book. This, however, is not sufficient 
for practical instruction ; besides the exhibited permanent series, 
a stock of well-preserved specimens should be kept for the express 
purpose of allowing the student to practise dissection and the 
method of independent examination; and in this latter I am 
inclined to include the method of determining to what order, 
family, genus or species any given object should be referred. By 
such practice alone can the student learn to understand the 
relative value of taxonomic characters and acquire the elementary 
knowledge indispensable for him in the future. Finally, in the 
educational museum should be formed a series of all the animals 
and plants which are of economic value, or otherwise of importance 
to man. The proposal to unite living and extinct forms in one 
series, which has been urged by eminent men with such excellent 
reasons, might be tried in the educational museum with great 
advantage to the student, as the principal objections that are 
brought forward against this plan being carried out in larger 
collections, do not apply here. 
A museum which offers to the teacher and student the 
materials mentioned fulfils its object; its formation does not 
