P4l REPORT 1870. 



really a ■well-arranged one, a recruit may be thereby won for the growing army of 

 physical investigators, and one more man saved from the misery of finding, when 

 he has been taken into some other career, that he has, somehow or other, mistaken 

 his profession, and made of his career one life-long mistake. 



Here comes the question. What is a well-arranged museum ? The answer is, 

 a well-arranged museum, for the particular purpose of which we are speaking, is 

 one in which the natural objects which belong to the locality, and which have 

 already struck upon the eye of such a person as the one contemplated, are clearly 

 explained in a well-arranged catalogue. The curiosity which is the mother of 

 science is not awakened for the first time in the museum, but out of doors, in 

 the wood, by the side of the brook, on the hillside, by scarped cliff and quai-ried 

 stone ; it is the function of the museum, by rendering possible the intellectual 

 pleasiu-e, which grows out of the surprise with which a novice first notes the 

 working of his facidty of inspiration, to prevent this curiosity from degenerating 

 into the mere woodman's craft of the gamekeeper, or the rough empiricism of the 

 farmer. The first step to be taken in a course of natural instruction is the pro- 

 viding of means whereby the faculties of observation and of verification may be 

 called into activity ; and the first exercise the student should be set down to is 

 that of recognizing, in the actual thing itself, the various properties and peculiari- 

 ties which some good book or some good catalogue tells him are observaole in it. 

 This is the first step, and, as in some other matters, ce ii'est que le premier pas qui 

 coute. And it need not cost much. There is a name familiar to Section D, and, 

 indeed, not likely for a long while to be forgotten by members of the British Asso- 

 ciation generally, extiiusic means as well as the intrinsic merits of the well-loved 

 man conspiring to keep his memory fresh among us, and the bearer of that name, 

 Edward Forbes, has left it as his opinion that " It is to the development of the 

 provincial museums that, I believe, we must in future look for the extension of in- 

 tellectual pursuits throughout the land." (Lecture "On the Educational Uses of 

 Museums," delivered at the Museyni of Practical Geology <and published in 18(>3. 

 Cited by Toynbee, " Hints on the Formation of Local Museums," 1863, p. 40.) 

 With the words of Edward Forbes I might do well to end what I have to say, but 

 I should like to say a word as to the policy of confining the contents of a local 

 museum to the natural-history specimens of the particular locality. No doubt the 

 first thing to be done is the collection of the local specimens, and this alike in the 

 interest of the potential Cuviers and Hugh Millers who may be born in the dis- 

 trict, and in the interest of the man of science who may visit the place when on 

 his travels. But so long as a specimen from the antipodes or from whatever cor- 

 ner of our world be really valuable, and be duly catalogued before it is admitted 

 into the museum, so that the lesson it has to teach may be learnable, I do not see 

 my way towards advising that foreign specimens be e:^cluded. It is to my mind 

 more important that all specimens should be catalogued as soon as received, than 

 that any shoidd be rejected when offered. 



I must not occupy your time further with this portion of my address. Let me 

 first say that a person who wishes to know wh.it a Field- Club can do for its mem- 

 bers, and not for them onty, but for the world at large, will do well to purchase 

 one, or any number more than one, of the Transactions of the TjTieside Naturalist's 

 Field-CluD ; and that if there be any person who thinks that White's ' Selborne ' 

 relates to a time and place so far off that there can be no truth in the book, and 

 who yet woidd like to try upon himself the working of the fourth disciplinary 

 agencies of which I have spoken, that, namely, of reading some local Natural 

 History on the spot of which it treats, and comparing it with the things themselves 

 in situ, let him repair to Weymouth, and work and walk up and down its cliffs and 

 valleys with Mr. Damon's book in his hands. 



I shall not be suspected in this place and upon this occasion, nor, as I hope, upon 

 any other, of a wish to depreciate the value of scientific instruction as an engine for 

 training the mind ; but neither, on the other hand, should I wish to depreciate the 

 value of literary culture, my view of the relations of these two gymnastics of the 

 mind being the very simple, obvious, and natural one that they should be hanno- 

 niously combined — 



Alterius sic 

 Altera sic poscit opem vis, et conjurat amice. 



