326 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
tated a certain withdrawal from the public which not unnatu¬ 
rally engendered an indifference to its wants and needs; a 
position from which the public was looked upon as being 
a bore, incapable of understanding scientific concepts and with 
whose education it was not the province of the museum to 
•concern itself. It is hut natural that the investigator, busy 
with the collection of data or the evolving of the solution of 
some problem, should look with disfavor upon such demands 
upon his time as might he made for the benefit of a public with 
which he has little or no sympathy; and I am convinced that the 
changes that have recently taken place in the attitude of mu¬ 
seums towards the public have primarily and mainly been due 
not to the voluntary initiative of museum employes but to evolu¬ 
tions of the various environments of musums reacting upon 
these institutions. Probably the chief influence brought to hear 
on this adjustment has been the result of an enlarged conception 
of the rights of the taxpayer and to his growing insistence that 
he profit by them. This is felt in many more or less intangible 
ways but very directly in the support to he derived from public 
taxation and appropriation and from private bequest. If an 
institution does not satisfy the public their lack of interest in 
its support will ere long become apparent in a most disquieting 
and disheartening manner. There have been naturalists in 
whose investigations the public seemed to manifest sufficient in¬ 
terest to furnish financial support hut rather, perhaps, on ac¬ 
count of the prestige accruing to the community from fostering 
such research than because of a real understanding of the work 
or of a personal interest in it, hut such cases have been largely 
due to the personality of these exceptional men and not unlikely 
in a considerable extent to the peculiarities of the periods in 
which they lived. Very likely the same characteristics that won 
success in past generations would fail of equal support if trans¬ 
posed to the changed conditions of present time. 
Aside from the rapidly growing public lecture courses of mu¬ 
seums the exhibitional department is that which most intimately 
touches the public and is that in which the science of museology 
finds its fullest expression; consequently it is very essential that 
