Sbpiember 23, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



411 



reappeared and disappeared in so unusual a 

 way that I watched it more closely. It was 

 oval in form, the longer axis parallel to the 

 horizon, bright in the central part and fading 

 out gradually at the border. It filled the com- 

 paratively vacant space to the east of a Capri- 

 corni, and was perhaps five or six degrees in 

 length. After some time I satisfied myself that 

 it could not be a cloud from the facts that it did 

 not obscure the stars, one or two of which were 

 on its boundary ; that it was, at brightest, 

 twice as bright as the Milky Way ; that it 

 brightened up and disappeared again too rap- 

 idly, and was apparently almost fixed in posi- 

 tion. In the latter feature and in its regularity 

 of outline it also differed from any aurora I 

 have ever seen. Toward the close of the exhi- 

 bition it moved a little to the west, so that its 

 last appearance was nearly central over a Cap- 

 ricorni. It last showed itself about S'SO™. It 

 must, therefore, have lasted in all at least 40 

 minutes, during which time it brightened up 

 and nearly or quite disappeared again perhaps 

 ten or twenty times. A noteworthy feature 

 was that there was nothing like an auroral 

 streamer and no aurora elsewhere, unless an 

 extremely faint, fixed illumination of the sky 

 along the north horizon was such. 



Quite likely it was an auroral beam seen end 

 on. If so, it affords one of the best opportuni- 

 ties that have ever occurred to determine the 

 height and length of such a beam. I, therefore, 

 describe the phenomenon in the hope that it 

 may have been seen and its position noted in 

 other parts of the country. 



Simon Newcomb. 



Haepee's Fbkey, W. Va., 



September 12, 1898. 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



Essays on Museums and Other Subjects Connected 



with Natural History. By Sir William 



Henry Flower, K. C. B. London, Mac- 



millan & Co., Limited ; New York, The Mac- 



millan Company. 1898. Pp. xv -f 394. 



Although the Essays on Museums form but 



a quarter of the bulk of this volume, they not 



unnaturally are accorded the first place on the 



title-page and form the opening chapters of the 



book. As Director in turn of the Museum of 



the Royal College of Surgeons and of the British 

 Museum of Natural History, Sir William Flower 

 has had an acquaintance with museums accorded 

 to few, while his words have an additional value 

 from the fact that he was practically the first to 

 recognize the duties of a museum to the public 

 and the important educational role it should be 

 made to play. As he says : " The idea that the 

 maintenance of a museum was a portion of the 

 public duty of the State, or of any municipal 

 institution, had, however, nowhere entered the 

 mind of man at the beginning of the last cen- 

 tury." And he might have added that there 

 are some who still think the principal, if not the 

 sole, object of museums should be the accumula- 

 tion of material for the use of private individuals. 



In this connection it is somewhat surprising 

 to find the late Dr. J. E. Gray quoted as sta- 

 ting that the purposes of a museum are two : 

 " first, the diffusion of instruction and rational 

 amusement among the mass of the people ; and, 

 secondly, to afford the scientific student every 

 possible means of examining and studying the 

 specimens of which the museum consists." 



"The first consideration in establishing a 

 museum, large or small," says Professor 

 Flower, "is that it should have some definite 

 object or purpose to fulfil ; and the next is that 

 means should be forthcoming not only to estab- 

 lish, but also to maintain the museum in a suit- 

 able manner to fulfil that purpose. Some per- 

 sons are enthusiastic enough to think that a 

 museum is in itself so good an object that they 

 have only to provide a building and cases and a 

 certain number of specimens, no matter exactly 

 what, to fill them, and then the thing is done ; 

 whereas the truth is the work has only then 

 begun. What a museum really depends on is 

 not its building, not its cases, not even its speci- 

 mens, but its curator." And great stress is 

 laid upon the fact that the care and administra- 

 tion of a museum, and its efficiency as an edu- 

 cational factor in a community, demands not 

 only especial knowledge and training, but an 

 inborn fitness for the work, and that these in 

 turn are worthy of their due renumeration. In 

 addition to skill, education, manual dexterity 

 and good taste the museum curator should pos- 

 sess various moral qualifications not found in 

 every professional man — punctuality, habits of 



