5ii] Museum-History and Museums of History, 267 
^ne. I am confident, also, that a museum wisely organized 
and properly arranged is certain to benefit the library near 
which it stands in many ways, and more positively than 
through its power to stimulate interest in books, and thus 
to increase the general popularity of the library and to 
enlarge its endowment. 
Many books and valuable ones would be required in this 
best kind of museum work, but it is not intended to enter 
into competition with the library. When necessary, vol- 
umes might be duplicated. It is very often the case, how- 
ever, that books are more useful and safer in the museum 
than on the library shelves, — for in the museum they may 
be seen daily by thousands, while in the library their very 
existence is forgotten by all except their custodian. 
Audubon’s “ Birds of North America ” is a book which 
every one has heard of and which every one wants to see at 
least once in his lifetime. In a library, it probably is not 
examined by ten persons in a year. In a museum, if the 
volume were exposed to view in a glass case, a few of the 
most striking plates detached, framed, and hung upon the 
wall near at hand, it will teach a lesson to every passer-by. 
The library may be called upon for aid by the museum 
in many directions. Pictures are often better than speci- 
mens to illustrate certain ideas. The races of man and 
their distribution can only be shown by pictures and maps. 
Atlases of ethnological portraits and maps are out of place 
in a library if there is a museum near by in which they can 
be displayed. They are not even members of the class 
described by Lamb as “ books which are not books.” They 
are not books, but museum specimens, masquerading in the 
dress of books. 
In selecting courses for the development of a museum, 
it may be useful to consider what are the fields open to 
museum work. As a matter of convenience museums are 
commonly classed in two groups — those of science and 
those of art, and in Great Britain the great national system 
is mainly under the control of “ The Science and Art De- 
partment of the Committee of Council on Education.” 
