SESSION 1896-97. xlvii 



in the past year. Such visitants, if Tvell selected, would probably 

 be -welcome guests at the houses of some of those interested in the 

 museum in each place. 



The effect at the country museums would be that three times in 

 the year a visitant would arrive for one of the three sections, would 

 work everything up to date, stir the local interests by ad\dce and 

 a lecture, stimulate the cai'etaker, and arrange routine work that 

 could be carried out before the next year's visit, and yet would 

 not cost more than having down three lecturers for the local institu- 

 tion or society, apart fi'om this work. 



To many, perhaps most, museums, £30 for skilled work, and 

 £30 or £40 for a caretaker, would be an economy on their present 

 expenditure, while they would get far better attention. Such 

 a system could not be suddenly started; but if there were an 

 official base for it, curators could interchange work according to 

 their specialities, and as each museum post fell vacant it might be 

 placed in commission among the best curators in that district, until 

 by gradual selection the most competent men were attached to forty 

 or fifty museums, to be served in rotation. It was not impossible, 

 Professor Petrie thought, that the highest class of the local museums 

 might be glad to subscribe, so as to get special attention on subjects 

 outside of the studies of their present curators. 



Mr. W. E. Hoyle said that he hoped no action would be taken 

 in this matter in such a way as to prevent co-operation with the 

 Museums Association. Professor Petrie's scheme seemed to him 

 a most simple and practical one, and he thought it would be a good 

 thing for those specially interested in it to confer with the officials 

 of the Museums Association with regard to it. The chief difficulty 

 which he foresaw in carrying it out was the almost incredible 

 inertia of museum committees. The Museums Association met 

 once a year, and everyone who had attended its meetings had 

 admitted their value in enabling curators to exchange ideas upon 

 all museum questions. It had been in existence about six years, 

 but hitherto very few societies had cared to go to the expense of 

 sending their curators to its meetings. In the museum over which 

 he had the honour to preside there were four assistant curators who 

 were doing good work. 



Mr. G. Abbott cordially supported Professor Petrie's suggestions, 

 and thought that an increase in the number of Unions of Natura- 

 lists' Societies would greatly tend towards their general adoption. 



Professor Johnson protested against the curators of our local 

 museums being converted into mere caretakers, as he thought 

 the tendency should be in the opposite dii'ection. It would be 

 well to urge our local societies to employ as their curator 

 a specialist of some kind, and to give him a chance of rising 

 above the position he held at first, rather than to make 

 him feel that he would always be a mere caretaker dependent 

 wholly on some one who came down occasionally from some centre 

 of enlightenment. He knew an admirable ciu-ator in the north of 

 Ireland, seventy years of age, and a specialist in three or four 



