s (or
should be) provided by the school or university, though, of course,
the students should also visit the more popular museums. The funds and
staff and space required for the one are not sufficient for both. If
both are attempted, the unpopular academic, or scholars', exhibition
will get the upper hand and suppress the other, since it is a far
easier thing to carry out successfully (for the class aimed at) than
is the carefully planned exhibition intended for the "edification" of
the greater public. The university museum aims at imparting a much
greater amount of detailed and elaborate information than does the
great public museum, and requires from the student who uses it a
special previous study of the subject, and an exceptional amount of
attention and pains in examining the objects exhibited.

Too many of the public museums of Europe aim at the "instruction" of
the special student rather than at the "edification" of the general
public, whilst most aim at nothing at all except showing, without
explanation or comment, a vast mass of specimens or pictures, at the
sight of which the patient but bored public gapes with wonder. The
public galleries of the Natural History Museum in London have been
arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public
than those of any other museum which I know. But they still contain
too large a number of specimens, and still require an immense amount
of work in weeding, selection and labelling, and in deliberately
making the specimens exhibited tell a tale which is worth remembering,
and can be remembered. Except in the case of the larger specimens, and
especially those of fossilized skeletons and shells of extinct
animals, it must be remembered that the bulk of the specimens (and,
indeed, all the valuable skins of animals and birds, and the vast
series of insects and such small things) in that, as in every other
large museum, are contained in cabinets protected from the destructive
action of light, and arranged for the most part in rooms to which
access is obtained only by serious workers after special application.
The fishes and other animals preserved in alcohol are kept in a
special fire-proof "spirit-building."

A provincial public museum, even if it does not aim at the
guardianship of important local "records" of natural history and
antiquity, should aim at the edification of the public--the grown-up
public--and not at the instruction of school children. The no