188 ON CABINETS OF NATURAL HISTORY SPECIMENS, ETC.
lamentations uttered [by the children of the village school] upon my
announcing, at our last lesson before Easter, the necessity of six
weeks' absence at Cambridge duties, could possibly have doubted
the great interest the children take in these exercises."4
Nor is it only in schools that cabinets of Natural History objects
would be valued as useful loans ; there is no question that they
would also be much prized as attractive objects at village soirees and
other social gatherings, where adults would have an opportunity of
inspecting them. Their educational value would obviously be much
increased if, when on loan at any centre, an intelligent person in
the locality would undertake to give a demonstration or lecturette on
their contents.
It will probably be found desirable that the number of specimens
in any single loan collection should be small (perhaps not more than
twenty) but that the objects themselves, though not necessarily ex-
pensive, should be large and attractive, so as to impress the observer
by appealing to the eye. Above all, they should be accompanied by
full, descriptive, and bold labels. The selection, arrangement, and
labelling of the collections could only be satisfactorily carried out by
scientific assistants, experienced in museum work. The Central
County Institution is therefore evidently marked out as the place
where the cabinets should be prepared, and whence they should
issue. The scheme would tend to gain for the Institution respect
and sympathy in all parts of the county, even from those who might
never come within its walls ; while it would probably be the means
of obtaining from remote sources donations of local objects of
interest.
But there is no shutting our eyes to the fact that such a scheme
would naturally entail some expense. Money, which in this sordid
world unfortunately measures all things, will assuredly measure the
extent to which extraneous work of this character can be accom-
plished. The longer the purse, the wider the work. But the cost
of procuring, arranging, and distributing a few small cabinets will,
after all, be but small. May we not say that it will be utterly insig-
nificant in comparison with the good which it is likely to effect in
the schools of the county !
Every village school is verily a "workshop of humanity"—the little
place where the teachers are busy in shaping the intellect and charac-
ter of those who in the course of a very few years will be doing the
4 Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow." By the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A.
London, 1862, p. 109.