I find this system to yield excellent results; and I have no hesitation whatever in saying, that any one who has gone through such a course, attentively, is in a better position to form a conception of the great truths of Biology, especially of morphology (which is what we chiefly deal with), than if he had merely read all the books on that topic put together.

The connection of this discourse with the Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus arises out of the exhibition in that collection of certain aids to our laboratory work.  Such of you as have visited that very interesting collection may have noticed a series of diagrams and of preparations illustrating the structure of a frog.  Those diagrams and preparations have been made for the use of the students in the biological laboratory.  Similar diagrams and preparations illustrating the structure of all the other forms of life we examine, are either made or in course of preparation.  Thus the student has before him, first, a picture of the structure he ought to see; secondly, the structure itself worked out; and if with these aids, and such needful explanations and practical hints as a demonstrator can supply, he cannot make out the facts for himself in the materials supplied to him, he had better take to some other pursuit than that of biological science.

I should have been glad to have said a few words about the use of museums in the study of Biology, but I see that my time is becoming short, and I have yet another question to answer.  Nevertheless I must, at the risk of wearying you, say a word or two upon the important subject of museums.  Without doubt there are no helps to the study of Biology, or rather to some branches of it, which are, or may be, more important than natural history museums; but, in order to take this place in regard to Biology, they must be museums of the future.  The museums of the present do not, by any means, do so much for us as they might do.  I do not wish to particularise, but I dare say many of you, seeking knowledge, or in the laudable desire to employ a holiday usefully, have visited some great natural history museum.  You have walked through a quarter of a mile of animals, more or less well stuffed, with their long names written out underneath them; and, unless your experience is very different from that of most people, the upshot of it all is that you leave that splendid pile with sore feet, a bad headache, and a general idea that the animal kingdom is a “mighty maze without a plan.”  I do not think that a museum which brings about this result does all that may be reasonably expected from such an institution.  What is needed in a collection of natural history is that it should be made as accessible and as useful as possible, on the one hand to the general public, and on the other to scientific workers.  That need is not met by constructing a sort of happy hunting-ground of miles of glass cases; and, under the pretence of exhibiting everything, putting the maximum amount of obstacle in the way of those who wish properly to see anything.