who, as the voting on the subject shows, deems the cultivation of
knowledge a fit subject for mental starvation. “The country cannot afford
it,” they cry. Has it not occurred to these wise-acres, that stinting the
means of knowledge is not economy but foolishness? A nation is great in
proportion to the intelligence of its people, and, whilst we have to
endure—for a time—ignorance in our legislators of the fundamental base on
which rests a nation’s happiness, morality and contentedness, steps should
be taken at the next elections to demand from aspiring applicants for
legislative honours their attitude towards science, literature, and art.

Knowledge and learning encircle, dominate and control all that constitutes
man’s life. Knowledge is power, the strongest and surest power of self-
control, of wisdom, and begets a tranquil philosophy under all conditions
of life. Given but a sufficiency of knowledge and two-thirds of the ills,
moral, social and economic, would vanish from the face of the earth.
Ignorance is the mother of strife and the father of evil, and its progeny
busies our police courts and fills our gaols. From the writer’s own
knowledge of the Museum and Library, the means are not nearly sufficient
to make those institutions what Mr. Woodward and Mr. Battye could wish. It
is positively disheartening to those public officials to endure public
complaints of deficiencies in the Museum and Library without the means to
rectify. This writer is interested in paleontology, yet, owing to the want
of funds, he, and I expect, a good many more in city and country who visit
the Museum, are disappointed by the meagre number of fossils on view. But
it is the writer’s fervent wish that one of those legislators who voted
against the grant will die soon and donate his skull to the Museum ; it
will correspond beautifully with the solitary Neanderthal which is in the
case.—Yours, etc.,
Northam, Nov. 18.  R. J. EDMUND.