140 
M. .TOSIAH ROBERTS. 
curiosity than for practical information. However, in recent years the subject 
has received considerable attention in the way of occasional suggestions and 
remarks from those whose occupation has brought them directly in contact with 
museums, either as curators or teachers. 
Prof. Ward has paid considerable attention to the arrangement of the interior 
of museums, and it is to be regretted that his views upon the subject have not 
been given to the public.* 
Dr. Sclater, whose experience with museums has been such as to render his 
opinion valuable, has given his views upon this question in a paper read before 
the British Association (15,455). 
He states that the building should be constructed in accordance with the 
needs of the classes of people which the museum is intended to accommodate, 
namely; the public at large who go there to get more or less general notion of the 
structure of natural objects, and their general arrangement in a systemata nature?, 
the students who use the museum for scientific purposes, and the officers of the 
institution whose business it is to amass and arrange the collections. He recom¬ 
mends wall-cases hermetically sealed on the side towards the public and opening 
behind into work-rooms where specimens can be taken out and examined, and in 
which unexposed portions of the same series are arranged in drawers and 
cabinets, t 
Mr. Wallace, (15), objects to the system of wall-cases proposed by Dr. 
Sclater, upon the ground that they are not adapted to fulfil the purpose for which 
they were designed. His objections to such cases are : 
First. — They admit of any object being seen by the smallest number of 
persons at once, so that any person studying an object almost necessarily monop¬ 
olizes it and prevents others from approaching it, an inconvenience that reaches 
its maximum in the cases exhibited in Dr. Sclater’s plan. 
Second. — Objects in wall-cases can be seen only on one side, while all sides 
of natural history objects require to be seen. Wall-cases would necessitate many 
specimens to do the work of one. 
Third. — The observer on the one side from which alone he can see an object, 
will usually stand in his own light, and will even have distinct vision further im¬ 
paired by reflection from the glass. 
Fourth. — When small objects occur alternately with large ones, a great 
waste of space occurs, and the attention is distracted from the less conspicuous 
object. 
Fifth. — It is an expensive and wasteful mode of arrangement. The system 
advocated by Mr. Wallace is that of detached cases on tables or on the floor, of 
various sizes and each exhibiting one typical object or group of objects, capable 
of being seen on all sides , and admitting of convenient examination in the best 
light by the greatest number of persons at once. 
*Prof. Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, N. Y., is the most extensive dealer in natural 
history specimens of all kinds in this country, and it is my impression that his business is the 
largest of its kind in the world, now that Edouard Vessaux, of Paris, is dead. Prof. Ward 
devised the plans for the cases at Cornell University, that now contain Prof. Newcomb’s ex¬ 
tensive conchological collection, the third in size in the world; he has also done a great deal 
of similar work for other universities and colleges in this country. Vide short account of his 
establishment by Prof. Wilder (13,460) and by Prof. Morse (14). 
tThis plan for museum cases was first suggested by Dr. Hooker, in an article entitled 
“ A Metropolitan Naturalist,” in the Gardener's Chronicle for 1858, p. 749, (18). 
