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Speaking to the eyes

Intended 'to correlate the ideas of the visitor or student, by showing him plainly the natural connections between things', this comprehensive system of exhibition was designed with the needs of miners most clearly in mind. Here is how those needs were identified | Chapter 2 Speaking to the eyes Museums, legibility and the social order Tony Bennett In 1885 an anonymous report from the Mineralogical and Geological Department to the Trustees of the Australian Museum recommended the adop- tion of a 'comprehensive system of exhibition' for the museum's geological collections. The virtue of the system, it was claimed, was that it would enhance the usefulness of those collections (it would help the public to 'understand better the usefulness and attraction of Lithology, Mineralogy, Geology and Palaeontology') by increasing their legibility ('the visitor will be enabled to rapidly understand by sight what would require pages or books') (Australian Museum: 5; emphasis in original). Intended 'to correlate the ideas of the visitor or student, by showing him plainly the natural connections between things', this comprehensive system of exhibition was designed with the needs of miners most clearly in mind. Here is how those needs were identified: Miners indeed visit the Museum in great numbers in order to obtain the information of which they feel themselves in want, but although they are a very intelligent class of people, they generally want instruction in elementary things which are quite necessary to their purpose, they often entertain wrong theories of their own, sometimes original enough, and they are used to point out at once the knot of any. question in their own craft. They will soon get used to practically distinguish the most common kinds of minerals and rocks, they will, by natural disposition point out physical and regional differences which might have escaped the observation of scientific men, but they want science to be put before them in a popular light, which speaking to their eyes, spares their time, and remains deeply impressed on their memory. In the Museum's existing displays, the report argued, the stress placed on purely mineralogical principles of classification entailed that 'the only connect- ing links between .