president's address. 19 



of retrenchment under a stress of circumstances which is known 

 to have been severe; and their action, so far as the Museum is 

 concerned, thus calls merely for criticism which is dispassionate and 

 not wholly unsympathetic. But the point which arrests attention 

 is that this action seems to have been taken from a standpoint 

 which has advanced little beyond the ancient idea that a Museum 

 is onl}^ a glorified sort of curiosity shop. Another important 

 matter also seems not to have been realised, namel}', that the 

 a,rrested development of the Queensland Museum would mean a 

 standing invitation to foreign Museums to send their representa- 

 tiv^es or to subsidise local agents, to obtain specimens and 

 collections, since a paralysed local Museum would be unable to 

 accumulate satisfactory duplicate stores for exchange purposes. 



To use the words of the late Dr. Brown Goode,* a public 

 museum is not only " an'institution for the preservation of those 

 works which best illustrate the phenomena of nature and the 

 works of man, and the utilization of these for the increase of 

 knowledge and for the culture and enlightenment of the people." 

 It is also a bureau of information "to aid the occasional inquirer, 

 be he a labouring man, schoolbo}'-, journalist, public speaker or 

 savant, to obtain, without cost, exact information upon any subject 

 related to the specialties of the institution" (o/?. cit. pp.196, 200). 



Queensland has not yet taken upon herself the financial and 

 other responsibilities of a Universit3^ Her present educational 

 agencies, therefore, do not occupy the entire field so completel}'- 

 that she can afford to cripple the usefulness and arrest the 

 development even of one of them — and that the only one of its 

 its kind. One properly manned, equipped and maintained public 

 Museum — one bureau of information of an altogether special 

 character — is certainly not an extravagant provision for a State 



* Late Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge of 

 the United States National Museum, and an acknowledged authority on all 

 matters relating to Museums. The Smithsonian Institution has issued a 

 Memorial Vokmie, comprising the record of a Memorial Meeting of scientific 

 men, together with a selection of Goode's papers on Museums, and on the 

 history of science in America; which is of the greatest value to all interested 

 in Museums. ( Annual Report of the Board of Regents for the year ending 

 June, 1897 : Report of the U. S. National Museum. Part ii.). 



