592 . BEPORT— 1880. 



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 generations 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 into three classes, viz. : (1) National; (2) Pro- 

 vincial ; 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 institutions, 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 com- 

 bined with this kind of museum. The conservation of objects is subservient to 

 their immediate utility and unrestricted accessibility to the student. The collec- 

 tion 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 textbook. 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 under- 

 stand the relative value of taxonomic characters and acquire the elementary know- 

 ledge 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 require either a long time or heavy ex- 

 pense ; but the majority of these institutions outgrow in time their original limits 

 in one or the other direction ; and if such additions do not interfere with the 

 general arrangement of the museum, they neither destroy its character nor do they 

 add to its value as a strictly educational institution. 



The principal aim of a Provincial Museum ought, in my opinion, to be popular 

 instruction. I do not mean that it should be merely a place for mild amuse- 

 ment and recreation ; but that it should rank equal with all similar institutions 

 destined to spread knowledge and cultivate taste among the people. To attain this 

 aim, it should contain an arranged series of well-preserved specimens, representing 

 as many of the remarkable types of living forms as are obtainable ; a series of useful, 

 as well as noxious, plants and animals ; of economic products obtained from the ani- 

 mal and vegetable kingdoms ; and last, but not least, a complete and accurately 

 named series of the flora and fauna of the neighbourhood. The majority of Pro- 

 vincial Museums with which I am acquainted are far from coming up to this ideal. 

 One of the first principles by which the curator of such a museum should be guided 



