INTRODUCTION. 



THE British Museum dates its actual foundation from the year 

 1753, when an Act of Parliament was passed "for the purchase 

 of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the 

 Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing One 

 General Repository for the better Reception and more convenient 

 Use of the said Collections and of the Cottonian Library and of 

 the Additions thereto." 



Sir Hans Sloane, an eminent physician in London, was for 

 sixteen years President of the Royal College of Physicians 

 and in 1727 succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in the Presidential 

 Chair of the Royal Society. He was throughout his long 

 life a diligent and miscellaneous collector, having, as stated in 

 the Preamble of the Act of Incorporation of the Museum, 

 " through the course of many years, with great labour and 

 expense, gathered together whatever could be procured, either 

 in our own or foreign countries, that was rare and curious." 

 His collection, which at the time of his death in 1753 was 

 contained in his residence, the Manor House, Chelsea, consisted 

 of " books, drawings, manuscripts, prints, medals, and coins, 

 ancient and modern antiquities, seals, cameos and intaglios, 

 precious stones, agates, jaspers, vessels of agate and jasper, 

 crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures, and other things," 

 which latter included numerous zoological and geological speci- 

 mens, and an extensive herbarium of dried plants preserved in 

 310 large folio volumes. 



According to the terms of Sir Hans Sloane's will, this collec- 

 tion was purchased for the sum of 20,000 far below its 

 intrinsic value in order "that it might be preserved and 



