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somewhat extensive experience, while your Honorary Secretary was 

 in charge of the Museum of the Army Medical Department, and 

 subsequently Chairman of the Museum Committee at the College 

 of Surgeons, were the small details which he found usually requir- 

 ing most vigilant attention. But they are easily overcome by 

 judicious care, and sometimes never give any trouble. A plain 

 Code of Rules for the Museum is quite essential. Everything 

 received at the Museum should be entered by the keeper or porter, 

 first in a Waste-book, and then submitted in due course to the 

 proper authorities, by whom will be noted the destination of the 

 specimen, as may be decided on ; such as "thanks, but unfitted for 

 the Museum ;" or " thanks, and to be varnished, labelled, and 

 catalogued," &c. And finally by turning to that simple Waste-book 

 any one might see what had become of every addition to the 

 Museum, whether acquired by purchase, donation, or otherwise, 

 while that most curious article of all too well known as "missing," 

 would be held in particular check. And the catalogue, being 

 duly kept, would of course be the ever-ready record of precisely 

 all that information which is to render our provincial Museum 

 most valuable. And no excuse should be permitted for neglect or 

 evasion of such essential points as all these assuredly are; nor 

 should the keeper or porter be for a moment allowed to shirk 

 or delegate the making of the preliminary registries, the lists of 

 such books or other miscellanies as may belong to the collection, 

 and the due care of every thing therein, including the correctness of 

 the labels. 



And noW; having said so much of the Museums scattered through- 

 out the country, we might be expected to look nearer home, and to 

 answer a very pertinent question that may be put to us. "If you 

 are so wise, why don't your Society put some of this wisdom in 

 practice P " Simply because we have at present neither the apart- 

 ments, seiTants, nor money which would be required for the 

 purposes of a Museum. The Society is poor in everything but 

 honest zeal, and has been heretofore struggling, in a small apart- 

 ment and at large expense, to maintain its existence and usefidness 

 to the best of its means, with little patronage by the public and 

 still less by the great, and in the face of many difficulties, some 

 of which have already been intimated. Tet we have succeeded 

 and have a good prospect of still better speed. Something 

 further we might be expected to say conceraing the Canterbury 

 Museum in particular. But this is better avoided. Former repre- 

 sentations by respected members of the East Kent Natural History- 

 Society, Colonel Cox and Mr. Dowker, by its Honorary Secretary, 

 by the Editors of the Kentish Gazette, and by other persons con- 

 nected with the neighbourhood, have all been disregarded. Nor 

 has the remonstrance in a late Report by your Committee, though 

 unanimously adopted at the General Annual Meeting of your 

 Society, met with any better fate. And, indeed, nothing on the 

 subject has received the least attention by the guardians of our 

 City Museum but the last appeal from London by Mr. Frank 

 Buckland. Whatever may be the fate of his kind interest in the 

 subject, we should be thankful for his good intentions ; and indulge 

 the hope that the day may come when the City Museum and 

 the East Kent Natural History Society will be found working 

 harmoniously and usefully together. And it only now remains to 



