MUSEUMS AS EDUCATIONAL ADJUNCTS. 
139 
With reference to the utility of museum specimens for lecture purposes, Mr. 
Watts, F.G.S., has remarked as follows : 
“In addition to a museum, I think such a building should contain lecture 
rooms, especially fitted for scientific lectures, as the value of able discourses is 
frequently lost for want of clearness of illustration.” (8, 161.) 
The desirability of illustrating lectures by the actual specimens, whenever it 
is possible to do so, is so generally accepted by all teachers, that it needs only to 
be mentioned here as one of the advantages of having always at hand well 
selected and typical sets of specimens for class instruction. 
4. Museum specimens may be profitably used for the advancement of 
medical science and for instruction in a museum laboratory course , * the aim of 
which is to diffuse biological knowledge among medical students and enhance 
their power of discrimination. 
A writer in the Tribune has said : “We think the day is coming when it will 
be generally recognized that careful scientific observation is the most important 
labor performed in the world.” (5, 11, 371). 
Prof. Huxley, in a lecture delivered before the science classes at the South 
Kensington Museum, on the method of studying zoology, made the following 
pertinent remarks: 
“However good the lectures may be, and however extensive the course of 
reading by which they are followed up, they are but accessories to the great in¬ 
strument of scientific teaching—demonstration.” (6, 137.) 
Having the accumulated evidence before us in the shape of facts, normal and 
pathological specimens, they will still remain almost wholly useless unless these 
“ facts are transformed into scientific truths.” This is well put by Agassiz: 
“I should be glad to contribute my share towards removing the idea that 
science is the mere amassing of facts. It is true that scientific results grow out of 
facts, but not until they have been fertilized by thought. The facts must be 
collected, but their mere accumulation will never advance the sum of human 
knowledge by one step ; it is the comparison of facts and their transformation 
into ideas that lead to a deeper insight into the significance of nature. Stringing 
words together in incoherent succession does not make an intelligible sentence. 
Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they 
will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations, and 
recognize the thought that binds them together as a consistent whole.” (4,202.) 
II.— What is the most desirable form of a museum building , or of rooms devoted 
to museum purposes, and of the cases in which objects are to be displayed ? 
I would state at the outset that the great desideratum in a building or rooms 
devoted to museum purposes, is to have plenty of light , so that the details of the 
objects can be seen without difficulty in the remotest corner. 
The only effort at presenting this part of the subject in detail, giving plans, 
estimates, etc., that has come under my notice, is in the form of a little 
book written and illustrated by two architects, published in London in 1853. 
(10.) But our ideas in reference to these matters have changed so materially 
since that time, that the book in question would be referred to more out of 
* This proposed museum laboratory courso, as a part of a schome for educating medical 
men, will be referred to again. 
