June 14, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



925 



some important point. In the practise of 

 group-making that has developed during 

 the last fifteen years the need of the class 

 of visitors for whom they are intended is 

 often lost sight of. A group does not con- 

 vey any more information than a picture 

 in an ordinary picture-book might be made 

 to convey. It differs from the picture- 

 book in being more impressive by its size 

 and surroundings. Therefore a series of 

 groups, all of which illustrate different 

 aspects of the same idea, are undesirable, 

 because the impressiveness of each is de- 

 creased by the excessive application of the 

 same device. I believe the effect of this 

 undue multiplication of groups of the same 

 type may be noticed in the collections of 

 the United States National Museum. It is 

 true that the multiplication of groups in 

 the anthropological department of that mu- 

 seum is not due to a systematic endeavor 

 on the part of the administration to present 

 every Indian type in the form of a group. 

 It is due rather to the onerous duty im- 

 posed upon the museum to send some new 

 striking exhibit to every one of the endless 

 series of national and international exposi- 

 tions, which, of course, are seen almost ex- 

 clusively by sight-seers, who can not be 

 reached by anything but such large exhibits 

 as grout)S. Any one who will observe the 

 visitors of the United States National Mu- 

 seum strolling through the Catlin Hall, 

 which contains the Indian groups, will 

 readily see how the first group seems very 

 interesting, and how quickly the others ap- 

 pear of less and less interest and impor- 

 tance. For this reason it may safely be 

 said that the method of bringing together 

 large exhibits should be employed only 

 sparingly, and that the effect of each of 

 these exhibits will be the greater the better 

 it is set off against an indifferent back- 

 ground. 



I have mentioned here large exhibits as 

 those which will attract the general public. 



This is not quite correct, in so far as there 

 will always be an appreciable number of 

 visitors of a higher education, who may be 

 attracted by the beauty and compact idea 

 brought out by small special exhibits. 



Museums may also be employed for the 

 purpose of imparting systematic informa- 

 tion. The number of people who visit the 

 museum in search of such information is, 

 comparatively speaking, small, but not by 

 any means negligible ; and the duty of the 

 museum to supply such information to 

 those who are in search of it must not be 

 questioned. The question arises, however, 

 in how far a very large museum is capable 

 of supplying the needs of students of this 

 type. Assuming a building like the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History, which 

 has at present eighteen halls and six gal- 

 leries, with a floor space of from eight to 

 ten thousand feet for the halls, and of from 

 four to five thousand feet for the galleries, 

 and imagining the various halls so arranged 

 as to give a systematic presentation of the 

 various sciences, we find that the whole 

 becomes such a maze of separate and inter- 

 crossing systems, that the average visitor, 

 even if desirous of obtaining systematic in- 

 formation, would be frustrated by the mass 

 of material presented. 



Here, obviously, the fundamental prin- 

 ciple of elementary education has to be 

 applied ; namely, that effectiveness does not 

 lie in diversity, but in the thoroughness of 

 the material presented. Multum, non 

 multa. So far as I am aware, the attempt 

 at systematizing the collections of a very 

 large museum according to a rigid scheme 

 has never been made, obviously on account 

 of the insuperable difficulties that present 

 themselves. 



One of these difficulties consists in the 

 lack of systematic collections illustrating 

 all the different branches of science. This 

 lack is very striking in all our American 



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