■336 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
me to address the Wisconsin Library Association at La Crosse 
in February, 1907, I gladly embraced the opportunity to 
discuss before that important gathering some of the things that 
a museum should be, the wide and basic differences between 
libraries and museums and the special qualifications requisite in 
the museum man. 4 The cause of this misappreciation of the 
museum idea by librarians apparently is. that they have not fol¬ 
lowed the evolution of these institutions, conceiving them still 
to be what they were a few years ago—mere collections of ob¬ 
jects rather than educational institutions. 
Having adopted a scheme of public education many methods 
have suggested themselves as how best to carry it out and catch 
and hold the public’s attention and interest. In some instances 
it has been conceived that the conversion of a museum into a 
gigantic text book illustrated by specimens was the proper 
eourse to pursue; a system too literally in accordance with 
Goode’s celebrated dictum: “An efficient educational museum 
may be described as a collection of instructive labels, each illus¬ 
trated by a well-selected specimen.” 5 Paraphrasing this we 
might say that an efficient educational museum is a collection of 
important ideas illustrated by judiciously selected specimens 
whose import is indicated by carefully worded labels. 
Some years ago it was common museum practice to exhibit 
series after series of natural history objects each accompanied 
by a label giving only name and provenience, and as if to accen¬ 
tuate the monotony, but in reality to facilitate comparison, the 
animals were all mounted in essentially the same pose, with 
the left side towards the beholder. A case of these was a tiring 
procession, all apparently marching to the left but going no¬ 
where, and I might also add, leading nowhere. The idea 
seemed to be that taxonomy was the chief end of zoology 
and unfortunately the public failed to take a very lively 
interest in such displays. Ultimately the ambitious taxider¬ 
mist conceived the idea that he was practicing an art rather 
than merely following a trade and he developed groups of ani¬ 
mals which depicted something of their habits and habitats; 
but conservatism frowned on these early ambitions. As late as 
