On the Educational Uses of Museums. 345 
require is to see them distinctly grouped with regard to their ge- 
ography ; so that, for example, the emigrant proceeding to Aus- 
tralia might come and learn before he departed, and the officer 
ordered on duty to India or the West Indies might acquire an 
acquaintance with the structure and products of those countries 
that would enable him when there to occupy his spare time in 
research useful to himself and beneficial to his country. All that 
is required for carrying out such a collection is space. Contribu- 
tors anxious and able to assist would be found in numbers. 
Those who have derived some benefit and knowledge from their 
Studies in the Museum before leaving, would when abroad add 
judiciously and gratefully to its contents. Indeed there are at 
present extensive and valuable collections of colonial specimens 
lying useless, packed in boxes, that might be had for the asking, 
provided it could be shown that there was a proper place in which 
to arrange them for the public benefit. 
Museums, of themselves alone, are powerless to educate. But 
they can instruct the educated, and excite a desire for knowledge 
in the ignorant. The laborer who spends his holiday in a walk 
_ through the British Museum, cannot fail to come away with a 
Strong and reverential sense of the extent of knowledge possessed 
y his fellow-men. It is not the objects themselves that he sees 
there and wonders at, that make the impression, so much as the 
order and evident science which he cannot but recognize in the 
manner in which they are grouped and arranged. He learns that 
there is a meaning and value in every object however insignifi- 
cant, and that there is a way of looking at things common and 
tare distinct from the regarding of them as useless, useful, or 
curious,—the three terms of classification in favor with the igno- 
- He goes home and thinks over it; and when a holiday in 
simmer or a Sunday’s afternoon in spring tempts him with his 
Wife and little ones to walk into the fields, he finds that he has 
acquired a new interest in the stones, in the flowers, in the crea- 
tures of all kinds that throng around him. He can look at them 
With an inquiring pleasure, and talk of them to his children with 
a tale about things like them that he had seen ranged in order in 
the Museum. He has gained a new sense,—a thirst for natural 
knowledge, one promising to quench the thirst for beer and vicious 
€Xcitement that tortured him of old. If his intellectual capacity 
é limited and ordinary, he will become a better citizen and hap- 
Pler man ; if, in his brain there be dormant power, it may waken 
Up to make him a Watt, a Stephenson, or a Miller. : 
_ It is not the ignorant only who may benefit in the way just 
Indicated. The so-called educated are as likely to gain by a visit 
0a Museum, where their least cultivated faculties, those of ob- 
servation, may be healthily stimulated and brought into action. 
The defect of our systems of education is the neglect 
Szoonp Serres, Vol. XVIII, No. 54.—Nov., 1854. 44 
