96 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



LOCAL MUSEUMS. 



Bead before the Hamilton Asaociation, Nov. 7th, 1895. 



BY A, ALEXANDER. 



The subject which I have chosen for this night's paper is " The 

 Local Museum as an adjunct to our educational system." A dry 

 subject you may say, but not so to me, though very likely you may 

 consider my treatment of the subject as dry as the average museum 

 specimen is. 



Allow me to preface my remarks on the subject proper with a 

 few reasons for choosing this subject for discussion. 



And first of all, I may say that though we have had a museum 

 as you see it to-night for about fifteen years, we have never, as far as 

 I know, once sat down together to decide what our objects were in 

 founding and continuing it. This may appear rather a serious re- 

 flection upon our wisdom in this connection. Well, I thought it 

 must surely be time that we as an Association should look our mu- 

 seum and each other straight in the face, and ask each other and 

 ourselves what we propose doing in relation to it, and what we had 

 been doing for the promotion of Literature, Science and Art through 

 the influence of this miscellaneous collection which we call our 

 museum. 



In the second place, I may state that ever since 1888, the year 

 when we began, through the Biological Section, the collecting, nam- 

 ing, classifying and preserving, for future reference by the botanical 

 students and general public of the city, of the native flora of the 

 Hamilton district, from a defined area, I have had the idea ever 

 present to my mind which I purpose trying to make clear in this 

 paper, I thought if plants, why not animals and rocks, fresh water 

 and land shells, and insects ? 



It always appeared to me that not only to the teachers and 

 students of our college and common schools, but also to the ordin- 



