EDUCATION OF CXJRATOES. 313 



extremely-protracted fishes, some cliipped insects, and a lot 

 of shells, chiefly marine, which suggest association with 

 the word "stores." I allude to those odds and ends which 

 people do not want themselves, and which are, therefore, so 

 kindly brought as an offering — would I might say a " burnt " 

 one — to any institution so reckless of consequences as to admit 

 them. 



Nearly all museums of early days were imitators of the British 

 Museum, whilst those of later days affect the newer treatment 

 of South Kensington. Hence, in walking through any museum, 

 a technical observer can easily detect the sources of inspiration 

 and the lines of demarcation between the old and the new. 

 Really it amounts to this, that hardly any institution in 

 England thinks for itself. Museum authorities, like sheep, 

 follow the lead of the most ancient bell-wether; and the reason 

 of this is not far to seek. Curators, as a rule, are men with one 

 hobby — "one-horse" men, as the Americans so aptly put it — 

 *' sometimes wise, sometimes otherwise," but in many cases 

 totally devoid of that technical education so much needed in 

 reconciling the divergent atoms of the institutions they repre- 

 sent; in fact, head and hand seldom work together. Often, 

 owing to the want of technical advice, money is wasted in more 

 than one department, cases are too highly paid for, and have 

 not been thought out sufficiently as to their fitness for their 

 future contents, or the position in which they are to be placed, 

 or the more fatal error has been perpetrated of considering 

 them as merely units of a certain department instead of parts 

 of a whole. I contend that if it be necessary for a civil engineer 

 or other professional man to have mastered the various techni- 

 calities of his profession, it is also incumbent on curators to 

 have done or to do likewise, in order that they may grasp 

 the treatment of their museum as a whole, and not fall into 

 the grave fault of working up one department whilst ignoring 

 the others. N'othing is more distasteful to my mind than that 

 a man in the position of a curator should impertinently ride 

 one single hobby to death, to the utter exclusion and detriment 

 of all other branches of knowledge entrusted to his care. What 

 is the sum total of this ? In looking around any museum of 

 old standing we see twenty different styles and colours of cases, 



