THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROVINCIAL 

 MUSEUMS AND LOCAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



By T. Sheppard, F.G.S. 



{Being the Presidential Address, delivered at a Conversazione 

 held at the Museum, Hull, on October iyth, 1906). 



THE fact that your President for this year is at the 

 same time Curator of our local Museum, makes the 

 opportunity particularly appropriate for considering 

 the relationship which exists between the museum and the 

 local scientific societies. 



In visiting various institutions throughout the country, it 

 is found that in all towns the connection between the museum 

 and the scientific societies is not so close as obtains in our 

 own city. In some places the museum is maintained entirely 

 at the expense of the local societies. In these instances the 

 enthusiasm on the part of the various workers in the interests 

 of the museum is not commensurate with the income which 

 the societies possess, or with the amounts they are able to 

 place at the disposal of the museum. The charge for ad- 

 mission, which is generally made by these institutions, has 

 its serious drawbacks. 



Semi-private museums of this character also suffer from 

 a further disadvantage. It is found, as the result of ex- 

 perience, that ladies and gentlemen are not so much inclined 

 to present specimens to a museum which is not absolutely 

 public property, as they are to an institution which has the 

 guarantee of existence for all time, such as is possessed by a 

 municipal museum. I have in mind at the moment two or 

 three admirable institutions in the North of England which 

 contain most valuable specimens, but which are not able to 

 display them as they should be displayed on account of 

 lack of funds ; and they also occasionally miss valuable 

 collections merely from the fact that they have no guarantee 

 of permanency. 



In other museums that might be mentioned one finds 

 that there exists a sort of superior feeling on the part of the 

 officials, who ignore the work, and court not the help, of the 

 local societies. In such cases there is no doubt that both the 



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