NOVEMBEB 15, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



667 



looked over and criticized. The writer does 

 not believe that the majority of visitors to a 

 museum are actuated by a mere search for 

 entertainment. The public knows what the 

 museum contains and it visits the institution 

 because it desires to see the different kinds of 

 animals, plants and minerals. If the visit 

 was for the sake of mere entertainment, then 

 surely the same people would scarcely visit 

 the institution repeatedly. 



Dr. Boaz asks the question, " What can be 

 done for this class of visitors ? " In answer 

 to this I would call attention to the terse 

 definition of Professor William H. Flower, 

 who defines a museum as a place for the in- 

 culcation of ideas. We must not descend to 

 the plane of the public's point of view and 

 try to please it; we must, on the contrary, try 

 to lift it up to higher planes of thought. Na- 

 ture presents countless facts for our use and 

 we have but to utilize them to find an inex- 

 haustible mine of " healthy entertainment " 

 at our command. The idea of making ex- 

 hibits " popular " is receiving more attention 

 of late than the subject demands. In the 

 writer's opinion the popularity of an exhibit 

 should not be the motive governing its con- 

 struction. Each exhibit should crystallize 

 about some central thought or fact, so pre- 

 sented, in either label or preparation, as to fix 

 the thought in the mind of the visitor. There 

 will be, unquestionably, a number of people 

 who will fail to perceive this central idea, but 

 I am positive that the majority of visitors 

 will apprehend the lesson which the exhibit 

 seeks to teach. The writer's experience has 

 been that the museum visitors minutely in- 

 spect a group exhibit, searching for those little 

 artistic touches which make the modem 

 groups so interesting. To cite an example; 

 we have in the Chicago Academy of Sciences 

 a large group of Virginia deer, showing this 

 species in a Wisconsin forest. It is called a 

 " woodland courtship " on the label and pre- 

 sents two bucks fighting for the possession of 

 the female. In the same exhibit are several 

 chickadees, a red squirrel, a woodpecker and a 

 porcupine, besides some snail shells near a 

 pool of water. Several of these animals are 

 hidden by foliage, but the sharp eyes of some 



visitor invariably spies them and such ex- 

 clamations are heard as " Oh, see the squirrel!" 

 " Look at the little bird hanging by his feet ! " 

 (referring to one of the chickadees) or, " See 

 the woodpecker behind the tree ! " 



The public comes to the museum with 

 several definite questions which it seeks to 

 have answered. These are, what is the object? 

 where did it come from? What is it good 

 for? All of these questions may be answered 

 by specially prepared exhibits and labels. It 

 is astonishing to note with what avidity the 

 museum visitor studies a group which has been 

 prepared to illustrate some common aspect of 

 nature. A year or more ago the Chicago 

 Academy of Sciences began the preparation 

 of a collection of Illinois birds mounted in 

 small groups to show their nesting habits as 

 well as their young. With each group a map 

 was placed, showing the breeding, the winter 

 and the migration range of each species. 

 These cases are emphatically popular, although 

 they were not prepared for entertainment but 

 for study. 



As a rule the large museum makes the very 

 serious mistake of exhibiting too much ma- 

 terial and the visitor is bewildered, tries to 

 " do " the whole museum in one visit and 

 leaves it with an aggravated case of brain fag. 

 The writer has always contended that a 

 natural-history museum should divide its col- 

 lections into two parts, one of which is spe- 

 cially arranged for the museum visitor, while 

 the other is especially prepared for the con- 

 venience of the serious student, who will be, 

 as Dr. Boaz remarks, in the minority. The 

 endless exhibition of species and genera is 

 very tiresome to the museum visitor, to whom 

 they all look alike. If, however, a selection 

 be made to bring together a few of each family 

 to show their interrelationship and their con- 

 ti-asts, then the visitor is interested. Such 

 exhibits as the typical inhabitants of different 

 countries, those peculiar to certain regions or 

 those which have an etJonomic value are always 

 interesting to even the most casual visitor. 



It is doubtless true, as Dr. Boaz states, that 

 the label is quite secondary to the specimen, 

 which is the essential thing. The visitor 

 looks for the specimen first and then looks for 



