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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