NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 3. Vol I. MAY. 1892. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Private Collections. 



IN March we alluded briefly to the interest of Mr. Du Cane 

 Godrnan's Presidential Address, recently delivered to the Ento- 

 mological Society of London. The Address has now been printed, 

 and we make the following extract as worthy of special notice far 

 beyond Entomological circles : — 



" Working entomologists, apart from field workers, may be 

 divided, for my present purpose, into two classes, viz., those who are 

 connected with our museums and make the subject their profession 

 and those who are not so employed, but who pursue Entomology at 

 such times as they can spare from their regular business of life. It 

 is the latter, being the more numerous body, who have contributed 

 much more extensively to our present stock of entomological know- 

 ledge. Their work has been chiefly based upon their private 

 collections, formed partly from old sources, and partly from new 

 materials often collected by themselves, or brought by field naturalists 

 from all parts of the world. These collections hardly ever have any 

 permanent resting place in private hands; very seldom indeed does a 

 son take up the work of his father ; they either change hands, are 

 dispersed, or become — their happiest fate — absorbed in a public 

 museum. This system, which has gradually grown up, is, I think, 

 likely to change, as the extent of collections is, under modern 

 requirements, largely on the increase. This growth of collections 

 renders the subject studied far more complicated, and the difficulty is 

 likely to increase tenfold. The effect is already plainly visible, for 

 private collections are becoming rapidly absorbed by museums, or by 

 a much smaller number of private collectors, with whom they can 

 only temporarily remain. This absorption of private collections by 

 public museums is likely to continue as regards Entomology, as it 

 has in other subjects. It certainly has done so with plants, as now 

 hardly a private herbarium exists in this country — nearly all have 



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