tion that
museums are meant for children, which exists, I am sorry to say, even
in regard to so splendid and expensive a display of wonderful things
as that to be seen at the Natural History Museum, is due to the bad
tradition justified by the condition of other museums, where a child
may enjoy being astonished, but a grown-up person can take in nothing
which appeals to the intelligence. A new city museum is, it is
reported, to be established at Birmingham. We may hope that it will
not contain the usual unsatisfactory series of badly stuffed exotic
animals, birds, and reptiles, and trophies of South Sea islanders'
clubs and spears. It should contain first-rate specimens of the living
and extinct fauna of Warwickshire, and specimens of foreign animals
carefully selected to compare with them and throw light on them; also
local prehistoric and antiquarian specimens, illustrated by comparison
with the work of savage and remote races. The excellent suggestion has
been made that it should contain specimens of the insect-pests of
Warwickshire crops. It should also exhibit the minerals from which
manufactories of Birmingham draw their metals, and should show the
stages of their preparation. It should appeal, not to the boys and
girls of Birmingham in the first place, but to the adults, and to do
this it should be placed under the care of a really first-rate and
ingenious man, who might possibly do for the Birmingham Museum what
skilful arrangement and sound knowledge have done for its Art
Gallery--an institution intended to appeal not to school children, but
to the reasonable adult population of the city.

The principle of exhibiting permanently in public galleries a portion
of our great national collections and of preserving another and larger
portion in smaller rooms, where they can be more closely but not less
carefully disposed and brought out into perfect light and position
when required, should be applied to collections of pottery,
metal-work, carving, embroidery and such objects, and also to pictures
as well as to collections relating to natural history. The chief
reason for this is the enormous space required in order to place
permanently "on exhibition" all the objects contained in our national
art collections, which are continually growing. The vast size of the
galleries required, if the entire collections are to be exhibited so
that the public may walk in and see anything and everything in it,
permanently displayed