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THE PUBLIC MUSEUM AND EDUCATION. 5 
sometimes. with difficulty, made out, that is sufficient for a 
biological specimen in a university Teaching Museum. 
But visitors to a Public Museum are as a body totally 
different. Many go just as they would take a walk, without 
thought or care as to what they are going to see; others have 
a vague idea that they will be instructed and civilised, and 
only a small fraction of the total public go for the definite 
purpose of acquiring knowledge from the things displayed, or 
have got ideas about them to be verified, corrected or extended. 
Hence, the exhibits in a Public Biological Museum must be 
displayed in a manner to attract the interest of the casual 
passer-by, and they must be represented in as truly a life-like 
character as possible. If you cannot interest the visitor you — 
cannot instruct him; if he does not care to know what an 
animal is or what an object is used for, he will not read the 
label, be it ever so carefully written. A well-designed, popular 
Museum should always attract and recreate and excite interest ; 
and the visitor should come and go with the least possible 
consciousness that he is being educated. 
I cannot but briefly touch upon the many methods adopted 
at the present day by Museum Curators with these aims in 
view, but I should like to refer in some detail to one of them, 
and, perhaps the most important, viz., the “ Habitat ” Groups, 
and to epitomise the various steps that have led from the 
dreary exhibits of fifty years ago to the present realistic 
pictures of animal life that now adorn so many Public Museums. 
In the old days the principal object in mounting animals, 
especially mammals, was to preserve them and put them in a 
condition to be studied and compared one with another. But 
the science of taxidermy was given a great impetus by this 
demand for Museum groups. In some ways the task of the 
taxidermist is more difficult than that of the sculptor who 
deals only with plastic clay, for the taxidermist has not merely 
to prepare his model, but, in the case of mammals, to fit over 
