NATURE NOTES 
1 16 
thing is done ; whereas the truth is the work has only then begun. What a 
museum really depends upon for its success and usefulness is not its building, not 
its cases, not even its specimens, but its curator. . . . ” 
“ He must carefully consider the object of the museum, the class and capaci- 
ties of the persons for whose instruction it is founded, and the space available to 
carry out this object. He will then divide the subject to be illustrated into 
groups, and consider their relative proportions, according to which he will plan 
out the space. Large labels will next be prepared for the principal headings, as 
the chapters of a book, and smaller ones for the various sub-divisions. . . . 
Lastly will come the illustrative specimens.” 
Again in the essay on Local Museums the author insists on 
the necessity of an endowment and on the expenditure of “time, 
knowledge, and loving and sympathetic care ” upon a museum. 
“ ‘ It is not,’ he continues, ‘ the objects placed in a museum that constitute its 
value, so much as the method in which they are displayed, and the use made of 
them for the purpose of instruction.’ 
“ The scope of the museum should be strictly defined and limited ; there must 
be nothing like the general miscellaneous collection of all kinds of 1 curiosities,’ 
thrown indiscrimately together which constituted the old-fashioned country 
museum.” 
Even more directly practical are the suggestions in the paper 
on “ School Museums,” whilst that on “ Boys’ Museums,” 
contains some charming little bits of autobiography ; but for 
these we must refer our readers to the book itself. 
As might be expected by any one who has watched the dis- 
tinguished author’s scientific career, the series of essays on 
general biology deals mainly with the doctrine of evolution. It 
is pointed out how “ the study of morphology has led in succes- 
sion to the ideas of (i) teleology, or direct adaptation to purpose; 
(2) type, or common plan ; and (3) descent from a common 
ancestor with modification, according to the great principle of 
orderly evolution,” and this principle is illustrated from the 
history of hoofed animals as traced through the Tertiary geo- 
logical period and from the evidence as to the probable origin 
of whales. 
Sir William Flower’s contributions to anthropology deal 
with the physical side of the subject, insisting especially on the 
importance of the collection of more data as to craniometry and 
other details of human measurement ; but they include, besides 
the valuable address on the latest classification of the varieties 
of the human species delivered to the Anthropological Institute 
in 1885, the interesting Royal Institution lecture on pygmy 
races and the well-known essay on “Fashion in Deformity as 
illustrated in the customs of Barbarous and Civilised Races,” 
originally also given as a lecture to that Institution in 1880 and 
afterwards republished separately. This last article would seem 
to require a slight modification. It states that : “ In Europe 
tattooing .... is confined almost exclusively to sailors"; 
whereas it has recently been stated that this barbarous custom 
is becoming fashionable among both sexes of the aristocracy not 
only in England but also on the Continent. 
