OF THE UNITED STATES 443 



people that daily passed through its halls. All came, both men 

 and women, and I noticed that the great attraction was the cases 

 containing the monstrosities, and, if I may so express myself — 

 the usual unseeables — while, on the other hand, line collections 

 of comparative osteology, instruments, relief for the wounded, 

 were passed by, by the masses, and were studied only by the few, 

 the refined, and the progressive. While serving in the above 

 capacity, I wrote quite an extensive memoir, entitled " Outlines 

 for a Museum of Anatomy," and the same was duly published by 

 the United states Bureau of Education in Washington. The 

 objects advised to be brought together in this Museum were in- 

 tended to fully illustrate, in every possible way, upon a morpho- 

 logical basis, the law of organic evolution, and that is a plan of 

 museum we greatly need in all centers in this country. It was 

 adopted by many colleges and other institutions of learning, 

 greatly to the gratification of the hopes of its author — and that is 

 one kind of a museum we should have in mind. Then there are 

 museums devoted to such fields as those of manufactures and 

 patents, of the evolution of arms, of inventions, of zoology in all 

 of its departments, of botany, of coins, stamps, and other human 

 conveniences; objects illustrating geology and paleontology, of 

 ethnology, and indeed, of any other department of which 

 the human mind takes cognizance, or into which human in- 

 quisitiveness has carried its researches. Of whatever the 

 character the collection in any museum may be, however, it 

 should always be based upon the furtherance of several 

 closely allied subjects. These, although various, are akin. 

 Above all else, the object of a museum should seek to in- 

 struct, to teach, to advance the natural progressiveness of the 

 human mind. Its collections should be thoroughly illustrative 

 of the department or field it represents. Its objects should be 

 arranged in normal sequence and made comparative. For exam- 

 ple, if the museum be an ornithological one, and ornithology has 

 very largely been considered in the foregoing chapters of the 

 present work, it should be shown or set forth at the very entrance 

 to the room or rooms containing the collections, exactly what the 

 science of ornithology, in its widest sense, purports to be. This 

 can be conveniently done by means of properly printed labels, dis- 

 played in a methodical manner. Next in order should come a 

 series of models, and such actual specimens as can be obtained, 

 representing the origin of birds in paleontologic time, and their 



