MUSEUMS AS EDUCATIONAL ADJUNCTS. 
195 
while the public or cursory observers have full access to the specimens which are 
most intelligible and interesting to them. The question now arises, how are we 
to arrange the specimens in each of these two main divisions of the museum ? 
The arrangement of the specimens which are to be for the use of the students 
of science, may be dismissed from consideration at once, for in the hands of such 
they will naturally be accessibly disposed of. Not so with the specimens which 
are for public instruction and are to form the attractive feature of the museum. 
In order that these specimens may serve the purpose for which they were in¬ 
tended, much judgment and painstaking are necessary to place them in their 
proper relations, for as I have previously remarked, upon their arrangement in 
accordance with some definite plan depends very largely the favorableness of the 
impressions which are to be carried away by those who inspect the collection. 
Dr. Sclater is an advocate of what is called the “typical” or what he thinks 
would be a better term, the “representative ” system of arrangement (15). He 
is supported in this view by Prof. Huxley, (6,353), Prof. Wilder, (13), and in 
fact the best men of science to-day, generally. 
What we want in the arrangement of the contents of a museum, is to bring 
the various specimens exhibited into a natural or living relationship. 
V.— How can the material thus collected be made most useful? 
If I were to reply in a summary way to this question, I would answer, ‘ Use 
the material thus collected as the basis for a course of museum laboratory instruc¬ 
tion, which will train young minds to do accurate observational work, thus de¬ 
veloping the three great functions of the intellect, discrimination, agreement and 
retentiveness, while at the same time increasing the extent and diffusion of 
biological knowledge.’ 
One great object in teaching students should be to rid them of their willing¬ 
ness to memorize second-hand material as it is found in books, and to form a de¬ 
sire for that kind of knowledge which is to be gained only by observation 
of things themselves. Prof. Flower, speaking of the value of such knowledge, 
remarks: 
“ It is now generally admitted that a thorough and practically useful knowl¬ 
edge of the form and other properties of natural bodies can only be acquired by 
the examination of such bodies themselves. The difference between knowing a 
thing by description only and knowing it from personal acquaintance, need be 
scarcely insisted on.” (22). 
Of the great importance of biological work, especially to the medical student, 
that eminent authority, Prof. Huxley, has said: 
“To all those who intend to pursue physiology—and especially to those who 
propose to employ the working years of their lives in the practice of medicine—1 
say that there is no training so fitted, or which may be of such important service 
to them, as the thorough discipline in practical biological work which I have 
sketched, as being pursued in the laboratory hard by.” (17, XV., 219). 
As evidence of the value of museums for this purpose I quote from the 
recommendations found in the Fourth Report of the Members of the Royal Com¬ 
mission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science, which was 
mainly concerned with the scientific museums and collections of the metropolis. 
Speaking of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, it is recommended : 
“That, should the fund at the disposal of the college prove inadequate for the 
