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THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUSEUMS. 63
places of issue in an atlas, will learn more geography than all
the dry text-books conld teach him. But in the
case of the
natural aciences the habit of collecting is elmost essential, and
the private Museum is the key to the great publio Museum.
The youth who has e drawer full of a few score mineds at
home which he has diligently conned, will be entranced with
delight and interest when he can first visit tho superb collection
! of the British Museum. He will naturally seek out the kinds
of minerals previously known to him, and will be arnazod at
the variety, beauty, and size of the specimens displayed. His
knowledge already having some little depth will bo multiplied
by the extent of the public collection. The same considerations
will of course apply to paleontology, zoology, petrology, and
all ot>hcr branches of the classificatory sciences.
In all probability, indeed, botany is the best of all the
1
natural sciences in the educational point of view, because the
best Public Botanical Museum is in the fields and woods and
mountains. In this case the specimens are available in every
summer walk, and can be had without the slaughter attaching
to zoology and entomology. Though the average Englishman
of the present generation too often makes it the amusement
and joy of his life to slaughter any living thing he comes
across, surely our young ones should be brought up differently.
Now botany affords in an easy and wholly unobjectionable way
an unlimited variety of beautiful natural objects, the diagnosis
and classification of which give a mental exercise of the
most valuable possible kind, There can be no doubt whatever
that the late Professor Henslow was perfectly right in
advocating the general teaching of botany to children even in
primary schools, and his efforts were the first step towards
j that general extension of real as opposed to verbal teaching,
which we may hope to see ultimately prevail. Botany, however,
is less related to the subject of public Museums than other
natural sciences, because it ia quite clear that every botanical
student should form his own herbarium, and the great pnblio
herbaria of Kew and Bloomsbury can be of little use, except
to facilitate the researches of scientific botaniste, "he glasshonws
of Kew, of the Botanical &rdens at Liverpool, Man-