350 On the Educational Uses of Museums. 
meut of public museums and libraries through the application 
of local funds is opposed with a horrible vigor more worthy of a 
corporation among the Cannibal Islands than within the British 
Empire. The governing bodies of too many of our towns include 
no small proportion of advocates of unintellectual darkness. It 
is not the interest of the public but that of the publican which 
sways, when a councillor wiser than the rest proposes in vain to 
inform his fellow-citizens through the agency of free museums, 
libraries and gardens. ‘This may seem a harsh and _ possibly a 
rash censure, but I speak deliberately and with knowledge of 
examples. And yet, alas, the direful sway of distilleries and 
breweries may be excused, when we learn that in some, be it 
hoped few instances, the proposition to establish public libraries 
by means of a small local rating has been opposed by the members 
of local so-called philosophical institutions, on the plea that having 
got what they wanted in this way for themselves they did not 
choose to pay a tax for the extension of these advantages to their 
less fortunate fellow-citizens. 
n every museum of natural history, and probably in those de- 
voted to other objects, there gradually, often rapidly, accumulates 
a store of duplicates that if displayed in the collection render it 
more difficult to be studied than if they were away altogether, 
occupying as they do valuable space and impeding the under- 
standing of the relations and sequence of the objects classified. 
If, as is sometimes the case, they are rejected from the collection 
and stowed away in boxes or cellars, they are still.in the way ; for 
cellarage and storage—as we know here, from the want of them, 
to our detriment,—are indispensable for the proper conducting of 
the arrangements of museums. Yet out of these duplicates, 
more or less perfect sets of specimens might be made up, of very 
high value for purposes of instruction. A well-organized system - 
of mutual interchange and assistance would be one of the most 
cient means of making museums generally valuable aids to 
education. Much money, when money is at the command 0 
It is in this way, viz. by the contribution of authenticated and 
instructive specimens, that the museums supported by the State 
can most legitimately assist those established from local resources 
in the provinces: the scientific arrangements of the latter might 
also be faciltated through the aid of the officers attached to Gov- 
