513] Museum-History and Museums of History. 269 
of the new charter of the American Historical Association 
that its members consider a museum to be one of its 
legitimate agencies. 
Your Secretary has invited me to say something about 
the possibilities of utilizing museum methods for the pro- 
motion of historical studies. This I do with much hesita- 
tion, and I hope that my remarks may be considered as 
suggestions rather than as expressions of definite opinion. 
The art of museum administration is still in its infancy, and 
no attempt has yet been made to apply it systematically to 
the development of a museum of history. Experiment is 
as yet the museum-administrator’s only guide, and he often 
finds his most cherished plans thoroughly impracticable. 
That museums can ever be made as useful to history as 
they are to physical science, their most enthusiastic friend 
dares not hope. The two departments of science are too 
unlike. 
The historian studies events and their causes ; the natural- 
ist studies objects and the forces by which their existence is 
determined. The naturalist may assemble in a museum 
objects from every quarter of the globe and from every 
period of the earth’s history. Much of his work is devoted 
to the observation of finished structure, and for this pur- 
pose his specimens are at all times ready. When, however, 
he finds it necessary to study his subject in other aspects, 
he may have recourse to the physical, chemical, and physi- 
ological laboratories, the zoological and botanical gardens 
and aquaria, which should form a part of every perfect 
museum system. Here, almost at will, the phenomena of 
nature may be scrutinized and confirmed by repeated ob- 
servation, while studies impracticable in the nursery may 
usually be made by members of its staff, who carry its 
appliances with them to the seashore or to distant lands. 
The requirements of the historian are very different. 
Nevertheless I am confident that the museum may be made 
in his hands a most potent instrumentality for the promo- 
tion of historical studies. Its value is perhaps less fully 
realized than it would be were it not that so many of its 
