Museums

Abstract

THE great difficulty, as it seems to me, in promoting and maintaining the efficiency of our local museums lies in providing them with suitable curators; and in this connection an idea which occurred to me last year may prove not unserviceable. I have seen a large number of our provincial museums, and in many of them have found really extensive and valuable collections of natural objects which only require to be rightly named and properly arranged to become admirable educational aids. In few, however, is there enough material to engage the whole time and attention of an able man in taking care of it; indeed a single month devoted to each of the departments of zoology, botany, geology, and so forth, would suffice, and, in many cases, more than suffice, to put each into working order to begin with, and after the first arrangement it would be easy enough to maintain the efficiency of each collection and to add what fresh acquisitions might be made in the course of a week's visit once a year.