HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM 



SEQUENCE AND ARRANGEMENT OF COLLECTIONS 



The natural sequence of the exhibitions in each hall and in suc- 

 cessive halls is an educational principle of very first importance. It is 

 as important in natural history as it is in art. Visitors to the Berlin 

 Museum will recall the educational advantage of the arrangement 

 of the picture galleries according to the sequence of schools in various 

 countries. Exactly the same idea applies to a museum of natural 

 history. Yet with the exception of the Agassiz Museum in Cambridge, 

 no large museum, to our knowledge, has grasped the idea of the natural 

 grouping of halls or the natural sequence of subjects. 



There are two principal ideas in sequence, namely : 



Geographical Arrangement. — In this the visitor passes from country 

 to country, as he would in traveling. In American anthropology, for 

 example, he passes from East to West and studies the tribes of New 

 York, of the Central West, of the Plains region, of the Southwest, of 

 Mexico, and of Central America. Such lines of travel furnish a very 

 desirable arrangement for certain classes of exhibits, both in anthro- 

 pology and in zoology. 



Evolutionary Sequence. — This is the sequence of development. The 

 visitor compares primitive races with more civilized races. He fol- 

 lows the progress of eolithic, palaeolithic, and neolithic man, or he traces 

 the first steps of nature, the lower into the higher forms of plant and 

 of animal life. He begins with the simple organisms of the water 

 and traces the evolution step by step into the higher organisms of the 

 earth and of the air. 



Briefly, it may be said that both the geographical and evolutionary 

 arrangements, or kinds of sequence, are necessary in a great museum. 

 Sometimes the geographical arrangement is better; sometimes the 

 evolutionary, and sometimes both may be more or less combined. 

 One thing is absolutely essential : a well-ordered museum should present 

 a natural arrangement which the visitor can grasp and which will have 

 the same influence on the mind as travel or the direct observation of 

 evolutionary objects in the state of nature. 



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