ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 21 



All we can hope to do in our small museum is to appeal to the 

 student and the stranger ; whilst the specialist, bent on original 

 research, will naturally turn to more important institutions, 

 generally to the British Museum. 



Considering the magnitude and importance of our National 

 Museum — the pride of British science — it seems amazing that 

 its existence goes no further back than some hundred and fifty 

 years. It was first opened to the public at Montague House, on 

 January 15th, 1759, only, however, for three hours a day ; and 

 indeed for long afterwards the admission was restricted by 

 complicated regulations, which were no doubt considered 

 necessary at the time but which seem to us, looking back from these 

 days of freedom, to have been of a most vexatious character. 22 



The original nucleus of the British museum, around which 

 the magnificent national collections have aggregated in the 

 course of a century and a half, was the private museum of Sir 

 Hans Sloane. Sloane — the intimate friend of Boyle and Ray, 

 and the immediate successor of Newton in the Presidential chair 

 of the Royal Society — had not only made a great collection him- 

 self, begun in early life during his sojourn in the West Indies, 

 but he succeeded in 1701 to the valuable collections of his friend 

 William Courteen. In 1684, Courteen, who had lived much on 

 the continent, opened a suite of rooms in the Temple, and there 

 arranged his collections, on which he had spent the greater part 

 of his fortune, and which he valued at £"50,000. Yet the sum 

 paid by the nation in 1753 for the Sloane museum at Chelsea, 

 including Courteen's specimens, was but £"20,000 — a sum which, 

 according to a codicil to Sloane's will, was not a quarter of their 

 intrinsic value. The Act of Parliament which was passed for the 

 purchase of the Sloane collection and the Harleian manuscripts 

 was also directed to " providing one general repository for the 

 better reception and more convenient use for the said collection.'' 

 Such was the orgin of the British museum. It is this repository 

 which has gradually expanded into the splendid institutions at 

 Bloomsbury and South Kensington. 



22 Walter Harrison in his "History" gives the following description of the mode of 

 gaining admittance to the Museum : — 



" If any number, not exceeding fifteen, are inclined to see^it, they must send a list of their 

 christian and surnames, with their place of abode, to the porter's lodge, in order to their being 

 entered in the book ; in a few days the respective tickets will be made out, specifying the day 

 and hour when they are to come ; which, on being sent for, will be delivered. The fewer 

 names there are on the list, the sooner the company will gain admittance." 



