1894. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 15 



neglect. In 1877 the Mammals, Reptiles, Crustacea, Polyzoa, and 

 Actinozoa were sold to the Corporation of Nottingham, and soon 

 after the Birds, Mollusca, Fossils, and Minerals to the Corporation 

 of Bootle. The Museum contained thousands of interesting speci- 

 mens collected by members of families still well-known in the city, 

 and they were presented in the hope that they would be preserved — 

 and many were well worth preserving — but the labels and all 

 particulars have been lost and nothing is remembered about them." 

 Mr. Morton does not draw any moral, but it is plain enough. First, 

 co-operation and not competition is wanted in the scientific world ; 

 neither men nor money are enough to support more than a very 

 limited number of scientific institutions, even in one of the richest 

 cities of the world. Secondly, if proprietors and committees are 

 unable to recognise the public and national, or rather international, 

 nature of their trust m the preservation of scientific specimens, then 

 the nation should have power to take their trust from them. The 

 sale of these valuable collections may have been within the limits 

 of the law, but it was none the less an iniquity and morally 

 unjustifiable. 



Sunday Opening of Museums. 



Before leaving the Museums' Association, we cordially recom- 

 mend its members to read Mr. Holman Hunt's recent address to the 

 Sunday Society. Dr. Ball himself gives evidence that the Museum 

 Curator, overworked though he be, welcomes the opening of his Museum 

 on Sunday. Otherwise he must feel that his labour is largely wasted, 

 since so many of those for whom it is intended have no chance of 

 seeing it. In provincial Museums, too, where so much of the curator's 

 work must be done in the public galleries, Sunday, the curator's 

 holiday, is pre-eminently the day for the admission of " the great 

 public." Such curators will read with pleasure the following extracts 

 from Mr. Hunt's eloquent address : — 



" To Christians afraid of scientific pursuit, and who looked upon 

 art as far from deserving of confidence, he would say a word to dissi- 

 pate their fears. Museums, it was true, presented startling facts to 

 the eyes of men who, like the Mohammedan conqueror of Egypt, 

 ordered the burning of the Alexandrian library with the verdict that 

 all wisdom necessary for the true believer was in the Koran. Now, 

 independent investigation into the bottomless pit of knowledge must 

 by all scientific students be impartial, and must stop at that point 

 where materialistic facts failed to afford further evidence. They, 

 therefore, gave no intentional corroboration of spiritual ideas. He 

 believed that every full-minded person who went to a Museum, and 

 made himself acquainted with the evidences existing there of the links 

 in the order of creation, and of their relation to earlier and later facts, 

 had instinctively increased in him the certainty of the Author's existence, 

 and of His grandeur and of His all-sufficiency to bring about justice and 

 mercy. One most important lesson taught in all Museums, whether the 

 example looked at be a work of nature or of art, was in the demand 

 it had made for long-continued patience. Every fossil spoke of its 

 .adaptability to its conditions when in life, as having been produced 



