122 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 26. 



aggressively if not successfully generous in 

 supplying tlieir wants with expensive gifts, 

 accompanied by their business-cards. The fer- 

 tility of the imagination in the construction of 

 wedges may certainly be counted upon as quite 

 equal to the opening of any cracks which may 

 present themselves ; and we think it would have 

 been far more prudent to recognize and provide 

 for these dangers, however remote they might 

 be considered. 



We are, of course, conscious that the joining 

 of hands between science and the industries is 

 the general drift of the tendencies of the day, 

 especially in this country. That this will ele- 

 vate the industries, we have no doubt; but 

 that it will also elevate the ideals of science, 

 we do not believe. How will the future di- 

 rector, however scientific, avoid the necessity 

 of becoming, before the government and the 

 country, the representative of great commer- 

 cial and industrial questions and interests, 

 and be in danger of having his interests and 

 his thoughts drawn into the vortex of such 

 affairs, to the exclusion and neglect of the 

 purely scientific aims and objects of the mu- 

 seum ? We do not claim that this will be sure 

 to be the case, but simply that we do not see 

 how he can avoid the natural results of his 

 position at the head of the great industrial 

 museum of the country. 



Mr. Goode's pamphlet also contains other 

 matters, which, when viewed in the light given 

 by the past history of other museums, show 

 the neglect of essential precautions. There is, 

 for example, no provision for limiting the ac- 

 cumulations of specimens. On the contrary', 

 overpowered by the wants of his world-embra- 

 cing scheme, he appeals to public-spirited citi- 

 zens to come forward and deposit their valuable 

 and extensive private collections ; and it is 

 especially recommended that the officers, bj' 

 a wise forethought, should encourage this pro- 

 pensity to the utmost. 



Private collections have been made for the 

 most heterogeneous purposes ; and it is well 

 known that their possessors usually demand, in 

 return for their generosity in giving them, that 

 tliey shall be kept together, or have a goodly 



proportion of exliil:)ition space allotted to them. 

 Such unqualified appeals, and the neglect of all 

 other precautions * against the unlimited acqui- 

 sition of materials, are entirelj- at variance with 

 the selective policy previously announced, and 

 a complete surrender of the principles which 

 should govern a museum starting with a new- 

 ideal, and bent upon avoiding the errors of 

 policj' and the uunecessarj' burdens which had 

 been previously and truthfully described by 

 Mr. Goode as the greatest obstacles in the path 

 of the older museums. 



It does not require a prophetic eye to see in 

 the near future, that assisted by the Fish-com- 

 mission, the Geological surve}', and other de- 

 partments of the government, the business 

 energy and liberalitj- of the American citizen, 

 the pride, energj-, and influence of the present 

 staff of museum, uncontrolled by any prudential 

 considerations, and stimulated b}' the uni\ersal 

 field they are required to cover, will heap up 

 materials not onlj' faster than they can be han- 

 dled, but in such masses that they will become, 

 as in older museums, serious obstacles to the 

 progress of the museum of education itself, and 

 be still more serious in their effects upon the 

 museum of research. The resources of the 

 National museum, however great the3' may be, 

 will inevitably find themselves, sooner or later, 

 blocked by these accumulations ; and their care 

 will occupy- the time of the officers in an in- 

 creasing ratio. Luckilj' for science, men in 

 such positions have frequently found them- 

 selves unable to resist the suggestive seduc- 

 tions of research, and allowed collections to 

 suffer while they studied ; but many, too con- 

 scientious to do this, have been sacrificed to 

 the mere preservation of materials, whose labors 

 would have repaid the daily wages of many 

 more lower-class laborers to any civilized gov- 

 ernment. Large accumulations, however, not 

 only directly discourage the investigator by 



^ That we are not misrepresenting the spirit of the c 

 this remarlv may be learned in Mr. Goode's own words : "The 

 classification proposed should provide a place for every object 

 in existence which it is possible to describe, or which may be 

 designatetl by a name. When the object itself cannot be ob- 

 tained, its place should be supplied by a model, picture, or dia- 



