very humble surroundings to those of the greatest excellence. Their 

 number and equipment argue strongly for the need and value of such 

 institutions. They are for the most part maintained and conducted 

 by states, societies, universities or individuals. When a wise and 

 successful business man gives a million dollars to a cause or institution 

 that cause or insttiution must represent something worth while. AH 

 over the United States, public spirited citizens have been endowing 

 museums inasmuch as they have appreciated the great value of such 

 institutions for the entertainment and enlightenment of the people. 



More than twenty states have museums, some small and unimport- 

 ant, others well conducted and valuable. For example. New York has 

 more than one million specimens in its museum at Albany; Pennsyl- 

 vania has just established a handsome new museum; Ohio with al- 

 ready fifteen thousand square feet of museum space is to have a new 

 building in the near future; Alabama, North Carolinia and Virginia 

 have museums "unsurpassed in the south." 



According to size, population and wealth, Illinois should have a 

 museum much better and larger than that which it at present has. 

 Ranking third in wealth, third in population and third in mineral pro- 

 duction, it should not rank tenth in its museum. 



The Kind of Museum Desirable. 



The State has left the log house period in architecture and has 

 reached the time of well-built houses, and so the museum should not 

 be of the old fashioned type characteristic of a time when collections 

 were more or less of the nature of heaps of odds and ends stored in 

 a garret, dust covered, unidentified, unclassified and undescribed. It 

 should be rather an exponent of the modern museum method which 

 was defined by Dr. Goode, one of the greatest of museum workers in 

 this county, when he said, "A museum should be a good collection of 

 labels well illustrated by specimens." 



Nature of the Work. 



A museum should be: 



First, a store house. 



Second, a work shop. 



Third, an institution for entertainment and education. 



Fourth, an institution for the dissemination of knowledge. 



FIRST A storehouse. 



The State Museum should be the treasury of valuable natural his- 

 tory objects of the State. Plant and animal life are changing. Species 

 are becoming scarce or disappearing. Some animals that were com- 

 mon are no longer to be found in the State, but specimens could yet be 

 obtained in neighboring States, and be preserved here to show what 

 animal life at one time was. The same is true of the plant life. No 

 collection is more valuable or interesting than would be a complete 

 exhibit of the trees of the State. From time to time handsome minerals 



