56 Memorial of George Brown Goode. 



in glass cases. It should be a house full of ideas, arranged with the 

 strictest attention to system." . . . "A finished museum is a dead 

 museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum." 



Most noteworthy, however, was his paper contributed to the Museums 

 Association of Great Britain in 1895, entitled The Principles of Museum 

 Administration. This was a carefully prepared codification of "the 

 accepted principles of museum administration," which Mr. Goode hoped 

 would ' ' be the cause of much critical discussion. ' ' The ideas were 

 presented in the form of aphorisms and were exceptionally clear cut, 

 ending with the assertion that ' * the degree of civilization to which any 

 nation, city, or province has attained is best shown by the character of 

 its public museums and the liberality with which they are maintained. ' ' 



This paper was warmly welcomed by museum experts, many of 

 whom testified by their letters the interest they had in the clear pre- 

 sentation of the principles which should guide the museum administrator. 

 At the 1896 meeting of the same association Mr. Bather said : "When I 

 read the magnificently exhaustive address by Doctor G. Brown Goode, 

 published in our last report, it was manifest that all the ideas I had ever 

 had were anticipated in that masterly production ; ' ' whilst an obituary 

 note in the same volume says, ' ' His early death is a great loss, not only 

 to the United States Museum, but to museums in general, for he took a 

 deep and active interest in ^11 things affecting their development and 

 well-being." 



The Manchester Guardian, September 20, 1896, says: 



He was a recognized authority on all matters affecting museinu administration, 

 and in this capacity he last year wrote a paper on the principles of museum manage- 

 ment and economy, which was brought before the anniial congress of the Museums 

 Association at Newcastle, and has since attracted much attention as an admirable 

 exposition of the general theory of administration applicable to museum work in all 

 its branches. It is of interest to note that Doctor Goode's definition of a museum is 

 an institution for the preservation of those objects which best illustrate the phenom- 

 ena 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. In this spirit 

 Doctor Goode worked, and he not onl}' achieved much in his own country, but was 

 also ever ready to cordially cooperate with foreign kindred institutions, especially 

 those in England, for the advancement of museum work as a means of education. 



These activities would have been sufficient for an ordinary man, but in 

 addition he was the historian of American science. 



In 1886 he delivered, as president of the Biological Society of Wash- 

 ington, an address entitled The Beginnings of Natural History in Amer- 

 ica, tracing it from Thomas Harriott, who came to this country in 1585, 

 reciting the scientific labors of Captain John Smith, John Ray, Thomas 

 Jefferson, and a host of others. The spirit which actuated this address 

 is well illustrated in the following paragraph: 



It seems to me unfortunate, therefore, that we should allow the value of the labors 

 of our predecessors to be depreciated, or to refer to the naturalists of the last century 

 as belonging to the unscientific or the archaic period. It has been frequently said 



