Apkil 30, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



mi 



to me contradicts it more vitally than any 

 other that has been proposed. 



I have accorded very little place to the 

 character of the metamorphosis, because 

 there is no hard and fast line between com- 

 plete and incomplete ; but the closer com- 

 parative study of early stages will unques- 

 tionably help out our future classification. 

 I have not made use of any one character 

 as the basis of my scheme of division, be- 



cause I do not think nature works in that 

 way, and finally, I have used adult stages 

 only, because I see in the adult ready to 

 reproduce, the species. It is the culmina- 

 tion of individual growth, and until it is 

 ready to reproduce it is incomplete, subject 

 to change, and not an expression of the 

 point to which its development has attained. 

 In another form my scheme may be ex- 

 pressed as follows : 



Thysanura aiaitdibulata 



Mouth mandibulate id som< 



or all stAges 



Prothorax well developed n 



mobile ; head free but not 



a distinct neck 



I 



Prothorax reduced 



' immobile ; head on. 



a distinct neck 



Feet cla? tipped 

 Winga not fHnged , 



I 



SiPBOHOPTEBA 

 'HTmWOPTFBA , 



EuTGEEs College. 



John B. Smith. 



HOW MAY MUSEUMS BEST RETARD TEE 

 ADVANCE OF SCIENCE?* 



Vakiotjs subjects have at various times 

 suggested themselves to me as appropriate 

 for a paper to be submitted to this Associa- 

 tion, but when I read the magnificently ex- 

 haustive address by Dr. Brown Goode, pub- 

 lished in our last Report, it was manifest 

 that all the ideas I had ever had were an- 

 ticipated in that masterly production. 

 There is, however, one side of our subject 

 which has hardly had the attention paid to 

 it that it undoubtedly deserves. "We have 

 been taught how best to arrange our mu- 

 seums for the satisfaction of the collector, 

 of the student, of the investigator, or of the 

 British public, but no one has ever pointed 

 out to us the magnificent opportunities that 

 are at our disposal whereby we may accom- 

 plish the great work of retarding the ad- 



* From Eeport of Museum Association for 1896. 



vance of science. It will perhaps not be 

 wholly waste of time if we devote a few 

 minutes this morning to considering this 

 great power that is in our hands and how 

 we may avail ourselves of it. 



There are certain lines of conduct that 

 are so surely and obviously prejudicial to 

 science that the most uninstructed curator 

 scarcely needs to be reminded of them. 

 None of us but has been taught how to be- 

 wilder the eyes of the public with thirty 

 specimens of an object, all placed the same 

 way up, and displaying as few of its essen- 

 tial characters as possible, when one speci- 

 men properly labelled would have sufficed. 

 "We know how to strike dullness through 

 the hearts of thousands by our funereal 

 rows of stuffed birds with their melancholy 

 lines of Latin names ; we know how to chill 

 the enthusiasm of the young and to disgust 

 the susceptibilities of tender souls by the 



