334 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
hibition of specimens bearing only name and place labels. The 
public is not educated to the point where it can get many or¬ 
derly ideas beyond those that the curator has arranged for its 
assimilation; to them collections not so treated are largely con¬ 
glomerations of curios. 
Probably we are too much given to philosophising on insuffi¬ 
cient data, to- developing hypotheses and then twisting facts to 
conform to them. We have seen one factor after another 
brought forward as the dominating one in evolution, to have its 
day and sink back to a lower and probably more appropriate 
level. We have seen protective coloration in everything until 
we can find that one animal is colored in a certain manner for 
a certain environment notwithstanding that another occupying 
precisely the same environment may be quite differently colored 
and yet have equal necessity for protection; we have seen won¬ 
derful physical and instinctive adaptations whose foundations 
were in misinterpretations and imagination, so that we are in¬ 
clined to believe that we have not infrequently run wild on 
these subjects and that probably a museum arranged to expound 
our theories of to-day would have to be rearranged to-morrow to 
keep abreast of the varying phases of nature interpretation. 
“The reason why” is of great interest to the enquiring mind. 
It is taught in our schools and text books and then retaught in 
a different manner to conform to later investigation; and per¬ 
haps, and especially if we consider its cliental, it is no worse 
for a museum to temporarily teach a false though plausible 
doctrine than it is for a university to do so. 
The tendency of museums has set strongly in the direction 
of popular education and there is less of the exhibition of things 
whose interpretation is left to the visitor and more of the ex¬ 
position of ideas illustrated by specimens. This method is not 
without its dangers because the opportunities for an injudicious 
curator to do violence to nature in his interpretation of her are 
great and our supposed principles and laws of nature of to-day 
may be but the controverted fancies of to-morrow; so that there 
is need of the best talent and greatest care in so treating a col¬ 
lection. 
