330 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
was a lack of homogenity of ideas among museum workers as to 
the proper aim of the exhibition series. The parting line has 
on one side of it practically all of the directors of museums who 
have expressed an opinion and a fair number of curators; while 
on the other hand are a respectable number of curators whose 
scientific attainments are such as to bespeak careful considera¬ 
tion for their views. By some of these latter it is maintained 
for anthropology, that all specimens (including in many in¬ 
stances scores of duplicates) should he placed on exhibition both 
to insure their preservation and so that anyone wishing to make 
a detailed study can see them without the necessity of apply¬ 
ing for admission to study rooms. Another feature is perhaps 
best epitomised by a leading authority in anthropology in a pri¬ 
vate letter in which he writes: “Do not make the mistake of 
arranging an exhibit to illustrate a theory as to man’s cultural 
development but show the facts as you find them.” 
There is very little to be urged in favor of the first of these 
propositions but much that might be said in favor of the latter 
•and yet it is not convincing because it seems applicable to a dif¬ 
ferent phase of museum development than that under consid¬ 
eration. It appears to be more appropriate for research mu¬ 
seums, or perhaps we had better say University museums, than 
for those that are to be mainly used by the unspecialized, and to 
a great extent uninstructed public. 
In considering this matter it is desirable to arrive at some 
knowledge of the abilities of museum visitors to understand 
technical exhibits or to get information out of mere storehouses 
of objects. I know of no statistics that will aid much in this 
investigation and it is probable that statistics compiled at one 
museum would but poorly represent conditions pertaining at 
another. 
The age of visitors would have an important bearing on the 
question, for it is to be presumed that where an institution is 
largely patronized by school children it would be found that 
their ability to abstract was inferior to that of adults. Pre¬ 
sumably the younger the visitors the less the average knowledge 
of natural history or anthropology, and the less they can, un- 
