38
On the Formation of a Local Museum.
of minerals and fossils—such is the inventory and about the
scientific order of their contents.
The result of such an association as this of articles which
have no sort of relationship with the rest, is to convert the
whole into rubbish, using the word in the Palmerstonian
sense of being "matter in the wrong place." Not that such
museums, however, are absolutely useless. In default of
better, they are useful, just in proportion as they encourage
the collecting instinct in the beholders. But it will be ad-
mitted by those who are best able to judge that the only way
to make a local museum what it should be is to decline with
thanks all offers of foreign curiosities, and objects of which
no history has been preserved, and to which, consequently,
no value can attach, and to confine attention to the collection
of natural objects procurable within the confines of the
county to which the Society limits its researches.
It is useless to attempt to vie with larger and older
museums by accepting everything that may be offered; for
not only would such a collection probably never rise above
mediocrity, and would occupy a great deal more space than
would be required for the arrangement of locally collected
objects, but from an educational point of view it would never
be so valuable as a well-arranged series of minerals and
fossils, animals and plants, collected within what may be
termed the Society's area.
If for special reasons it should be deemed desirable to
preserve within the museum walls other objects than these,
they might be arranged in a separate department, and kept
quite distinct from the educational series.
At the last meeting of the British Association, held at
Swansea in August, 1880, Dr. Gunther, in his presidential
address to the Biological Section, referred in marked terms
to the value of provincial museums when properly designed
and arranged.
"The direct benefit," he observed, "of a complete collec-
tion of the flora and fauna of the district in which the pro-
vincial museum is situated is obvious, and cannot be
exaggerated.