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METHODS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
ohester, Edinburgh, end elsewhere, must naturally delight a
botanical student more than other people; bat the great cost
of maintaining an elaborate botanical prden renders it undesirable
fo attempt the work in many places. It is very
desirable, however, that every local Museum should have an
herbarium of the local plants, which, though kept under lock
and key, should be rendered accessible to any person wishing
to consult it for really botanical purposes. Such a public
herbarium greatly encourages the private collector by the
fwility for verifying names and ascertaining deficiencies.
But whatever may be said against particular Museums and
collections, there can be no doubt whatever that the increase
in the number of Museums of some sort or other muot bo
almost co-extensive with the progress of real popular education.
The Museum represents that real instruction, that knowledgo
of things as they are which‘ is obtained by the glance of the
eye, and the touch of the fingers. Tho time ought to have
arrived when the senseless verbal teaching formerly, and perhaps
even yet, predominant in schools should be abandoned.
A child should hardly be allowed to read about anything
unless a specimen or model, or, at any rate, a picture of the
thing can be placed before it. Words come thus to be, as they
should be, the handles to idem, instead of being empty sounds.
The Kindergarten system is a reform entirely in the right
direction, though it seems to run into some extravagances and
&surdities, owing to the natural excess of zed and ingenuity
in reformers. But I hope the time is not far distant when it
will be considered essential for every school to contain a small
Museum, or, more simply Rpeaking, a large cupboard to contain
6 few models of geometrical forms, mechanical powera, together
with cheap specimens of the commoner kinds of rocks, minerals,
and almost any kinds of objects interesting to children. Mr.
Tito Pagliardini has recently advocated the attaching of 8
mral scholastic Museum to every village Board-school,* but
he quite overshoots the mark in recommending that every
school should hwe B sepamte wing of the building filled with
Transactions ” of tbe Social Science Association, Cheltenham,
1878, pp 721-728.