Ward—Modern Exhibitional Tendencies of Museums. 337 
1883 it was written: “We know that museum authorities per¬ 
sist in crying out against groups, hut eventually they must give 
way and admit pieces that are at once interesting and instruc¬ 
tive.” 6 
The idea almost seems to have been that nothing could be 
instructive that was interesting, much as we have heard the 
parallel idea expressed that nothing that was palatable could be 
healthy; which undoubtedly has been evolved from the unde¬ 
niable fact that most medicines are distasteful. Can it be that 
the old museums conceived that the public would stand for a 
dose of science as unpalatable as one of medicine ? At all events, 
it seems to have been a rather recent inspiration for museums 
to attempt to interest and captivate the public and instruct it 
unawares. We do this with the miscellaneous reading of our 
children when we select for them books in which history or geo¬ 
graphy or some other school subject is interwoven and disguised 
in a fascinating story; and while many of the visitors of a free 
museum are still children the rest are after all only children 
grown up and the same kind of allurements will cause them to 
swallow the dose of instruction. 
Having once grasped the advantages of taxidermic groups 
in bringing out zoological facts their use has rapidly become 
general, almost universal, and the idea has spread to other de¬ 
partments, until we even have petrological groups. Science has 
not suffered by this ; the taxidermy of our museums has vastly 
improved in all details and as the making of a good group fre¬ 
quently involves more detailed knowledge of habits and habitats 
than can be found ready at hand, the studies necessitated have 
added to zoological and ecological science. Hext to mammals 
and birds, anthropology has most availed itself of this style of 
installation. The result of group exhibition is that the visitor 
sees a certain object not as an isolated, unrelated thing but in 
relation to other objects, in a reproduction of its natural envir¬ 
onment and in connection with others of its kind. Only those 
who have the planning and making of such groups are apt to 
appreciate the many details in which not hazy generalizations 
but exact specific knowledge is necessary, and can therefore 
