A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



in ordinary collections of stuffed specimens. This 

 feature of the museum has, to be sure, been imitated 

 in the American Museum of Natural History in New 

 York, but the South Kensington Museum was the first 

 in the field and is still the leader. 



PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE MUSEUM 



A few words should be added as to the use made by 

 the public of the treasures offered for their free inspec- 

 tion by the British Museum. I shall attempt nothing 

 further than a few data regarding actual visits to the 

 museum. In the year 1899 the total number of such 

 visits aggregated 663,724; in 1900 the figures rise to 

 689,249 well towards three-quarters of a million. 

 The number of visits is smallest in the winter months, 

 but mounts rapidly in April and May ; it recedes slight- 

 ly for June and July, and then comes forward to full 

 tide in August, during which month more than ninety- 

 five thousand people visited the museum in 1901, the 

 largest attendance in a single day being more than nine 

 thousand. August, of course, is the month of tourists 

 particularly of tourists from America but it is in- 

 teresting and suggestive to note that it is not the tour- 

 ist alone who visits the British Museum, for the flood- 

 tide days of attendance are always the Bank holidays, 

 including Christmas boxing-day and Easter Monday, 

 when the working-people turn out en masse. On these 

 days the number of visits sometimes mounts above 

 ten thousand. 



All this, it will be understood, refers exclusively to 

 the main building of the museum on Great Russell 

 Street. But, meantime, out in Kensington, at the nat- 



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