6 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
“Museums, of themselves alone, are powerless to educate, but they can instruct 
the educated, and excite a desire for knowledge in the ignorant. The labourer who 
spends his holiday in a walk through the British Museum cannot fail to come away 
with a strong and reverential sense of the extent of knowledge possessed by his 
fellow men. It is not the objects themselves that he sees there and wonders at 
that make this impression, so much as the order and evident science which he can- 
not but recognize in the manner in which they are grouped and arranged He 
learns that there is a meaning and value in every object, however insignificant, and 
that there is a way of looking at things common and rare, distinct from the regard¬ 
ing them as useless, useful, or curious, the three terms of classification in favour 
with the ignorant. He goes home and thinks over it; and when a holiday in sum¬ 
mer or a Sunday afternoon in spring tempts him, with his wife and little ones, to 
walk into the fields, he finds that he has acquired a new interest in the stones, in the 
flowers, in the creatures of all kinds that throng around him. He can look at them 
with an enquiring pleasure, and talk of them to his children, with a tale about 
things like them that he had seen ranged in order in the Museum. He has gained 
a new sense, a thirst for natural knowledge, one promising to quench the thirst 
for beer and vicious excitement that tortured him of old. If his intellectual capa¬ 
city be limited and ordinary, he will become a better citizen and happier man ; if 
in his brain there be dormant power, it may waken up to make him a Watt, a 
a Stephenson, or a Miller. 
It is not the ignorant only who may benefit in the way just indicated. The so- 
called educated are as likely to gain by a visit to a Museum, where their least culti¬ 
vated faculties, those of observation, may be healthily stimulated and brought into 
action. The great defect of our system of education is the neglect of educating the 
observing powers—a very distinct matter, be it noted, from scientific or industrial 
instruction. It is necessary to say this since the confounding of the two is evident 
in many of the documents that have been published of late on these very important 
subjects. Many persons seem to fancy that the elements that should constitute a 
sound and manly education are antagonistic—that the cultivation of taste through 
purely literary studies, and of reasoning through logic and mathematics, one or 
both, is opposed to the training in the equally important matter of observation, 
through those sciences that are descriptive and experimental. Surely, this is an 
error ! Partizanship of the one or other method, or rather department, of mental 
training, to the exclusion of the rest, is a narrow-minded and cramping view, from 
whatsoever point it is taken. Equal development and strengthening of all are re¬ 
quired for the constitution of the complete mind; and it is full time that we should 
begin to do now what we ought to have done long ago.” 
I may add that, in the University Museum is the largest collection ever brought 
together of the Fauna of Ireland, and a most remarkable feature in this department 
is the accumulation of fishes, for which the Board have provided a spacious, but 
yet unopened gallery; in this I hope native ichthyology will be fully displayed 
before the expected visit of the British Association in 1857. 
COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 
It seems fitting that I should offer a few observations on the higher pursuits of 
zoology. In having so much dwelt on the modes and objects of making collections, 
I have followed the course pointed out by the illustrious Mrs. Glass, who tells us 
first to catch our hare, and then how to cook it. We shall find that, having made our 
collections, we must call in comparative anatomy to aid us in classification. At the 
same time, we should not be led away by those who, dazzled by the genius of 
Cuvier, despise the study of the habits and external appearance of animals, a pro¬ 
ceeding which Cuvier never would have sanctioned. A mere comparative ana¬ 
tomist is not a zoologist: there are many strange anomalies which would lead him 
quite astray ; and did he depend solely on comparative anatomy, he would find him¬ 
self predicating the habits of animals at total variance with the real facts ; at the 
same time, no one can be entitled to the name of a naturalist who is not acquainted 
with this subject. An accomplished naturalist is a very great rarity, and we must 
content ourselves by joining together to try to make up as a whole what we can¬ 
not turn out as an individual. Having accomplished comparative anatomy, and, 
guided by observation, having acquired a fair insight into classification, we have 
