12 



COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



[Jan. 



ment will allow. The public will find in the exhibition-rooms 

 all that is likely to be of interest from the stores of the insti- 

 tution, labelled and arranged so as to be not only instructive, 

 but suggestive. Of course time alone will enable us to fill 

 out and complete this plan. We shall be compelled at first to 

 make a very unequal exhibition ; but as the blanks become 

 apparent they will be filled. From our stores the necessary 

 materials for the constantly increasing number of students 

 are to be supplied, and one of the chief duties of the Curator 

 must always be to meet the reasonable demands of those 

 charged with the instruction, by supplying them with ample 

 materials suited to the wants of the different classes engaged 

 in study at the Museum. The special students will have at 

 their command, under proper regulations, in the store and 

 work-rooms of the assistants, the materials of the department 

 in which they are interested. To the original investigator 

 the resources of the Museum will always be available, under 

 generous restrictions, with facilities for the publication of 

 investigations made with Museum materials, as far as the 

 means of the institution will allow. On the completion of 

 the additions proposed at present, the Museum will thus con- 

 sist of several departments of natural history, formerly sep- 

 arated in the University, and now all more or less intimately 

 connected. 



The number of exhibition-rooms will undoubtedly seem 

 small, compared with the total amount of space, to those who 

 are accustomed to wander through room after room of such 

 museums as the British Museum, the Jardin des Plantes ; 

 and still smaller, when compared with the new museums con- 

 templated in London, Vienna, and Berlin. This brings us 

 to the fundamental difference existing between the two sys- 

 tems possible in museums : one of which is to place before the 

 public everything in a single series ; the other to make such a 

 selection from the general collection, and also such other 

 combinations and special expositions, that, while the Museum 

 retains in its stores the archives of the science, the exhibi- 

 tion may place before the public an exposition of the prob- 

 lems of natural science in a condensed and easily intelligible 

 form. 



In the rooms reserved for special departments, the bulk of 



