May, 191 2. The Irish Naturalist. 85 



ON PROVINCIAL MUSEUMS. 



BY R. F. SCIIAKFF, PH.!)., B.SC. 



[Abstract of T.ccturc to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical 



Society, 5th March, 191 2.] 



At the outset of my address I would refer to tlie origin 

 of Museums and their gradual evolution. The first scientific 

 Museum actually founded was begun at Oxford in 1667 

 by Elias Ashmole, and to the present day this is still known 

 as the Ashmolean Museum. Some time later Sir Hans 

 Sloane, a native of Ulster, founded a private Museum in 

 London. It was a great collection of curiosities as well as 

 valuable books and manuscripts which on his death in 1719 

 was bequeathed to the nation and formed the nucleus of 

 what is still the finest and largest Museum in the \\ orld — 

 the British Museum. In the same century this newly-opened 

 vista of popular education rapidly spread through almost 

 every countr\' in Europe. In Ireland, the Royal Dublin 

 Society took the lead and actually opened the doors of its 

 newly-established Museum to the public in February, 1733. 

 More than half a century later came the Great Exhibition 

 in London in 185 1, as the outcome of which a great system 

 of educational Museums arose throughout the United 

 Kingdom. The popular conception of a Museum as a 

 repository for curiosities has now passed away, and a new 

 order of things has been established. The new functions of 

 Museums are now^ thoroughly understood, and if people 

 ca^nnot always carry out their ideas they at any rate know 

 what the}'^ want. 



As regards the construction of Museum buildings, it must 

 be maintained that few Museums have not grievously suffered 

 from the eminent architect. Frequently he has made rooms 

 too dark, sometimes he has overloaded them internally with 

 ornament, utterly oblivious of the fact that no ornament 

 of any kind should be tolerated in the interior of a Museum, 

 and that light is the foremost of all the essential qualities 

 of the building. It has been truly remarked that the v^alue 

 of a IMuseum will not be tested by its contents as a means of 



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