PROVINCIAL MUSEUMS. 
131 
interest than museums commonly possess. It is a system which is 
practicable and not too costly. Local specimens can be obtained at 
little expense, and a local fauna can be exhibited thoroughly and 
completely. It is generally wiser to do a little well than to attempt 
much and make a muddle of it. But when in addition to the little 
well done you can have all that would otherwise be inefficiently done, 
and lose nothing, the advantages seem to be all on one side. Objection 
has been taken to the suggested arrangement on artistic grounds. It 
has been said that the horizontal lines of division would be artistically 
objectionable, and that it would be more pleasing to arrange all the 
birds of one order in one artistic group. There is a certain truth in 
this, but the first object of a museum is instruction. The artistic 
effect will depend upon the skill of the curator, who may easily make 
the three irregular lines strong enough, and yet not so strong as to be 
objectionable ; and when the whole of an order is grouped together 
there is the very practical danger that he will select simply the 
showiest birds in order to produce an attractive effect. A Free Public 
Museum must be made attractive or the public will not frequent it. 
The object to be attained is this—to convey as large an amount of 
information as possible to those who can only take in its teachings by 
the eye as they pass along the galleries, and at the same time to make 
it easy for the student to get more detailed information when he 
requires it. 
The proposed arrangement might be simplified by introducing two 
stages only instead of three. In this case the local specimens would 
occupy the ground line as before, and above them would be placed 
selected specimens of the same order from all parts of the.world, the 
British forms not being separately grouped. Another modification 
might be adopted with the three stages by making the middle one 
represent, not the British forms, but those of the Palsearctic region, 
ill which Britain is included. The stages may be marked by difference 
of prevailing colour, or merely of pictorial elaboration. 
Nine out of ten of the visitors who pass through a museum will not 
give much time or thought to the study of what they see. But a good 
deal of information may be forced upon them by labels which they must 
read, by pictorial groups which tell attractive stories, and by compari¬ 
sons which are too obvious to be missed. But then the labels must be in 
bold type, and in English. Such pedantries as Pisces fiuviatiles, 
instead of “ Freshwater Fishes,” are simply intolerable in a popular 
museum. The pictorial groups must be pictures of family life, not 
merely rocks and grasses with single specimens stuck upright among 
them. In the comparisons which the public are asked to make the 
things to be compared must be close together, staring them in the face, 
not in separate cases right and left of them. 
The arrangement suggested above provides for all these methods of 
driving home the truths of Natural History into the minds of casual 
visitors. It is applicable to all the departments of a museum, so that 
