MUSEUMS OF THE ANCIENTS 



attention. It has already been brought before the notice of 

 the Association, both in presidential and sectional addresses. 

 A committee of our members is at the present time engaged 

 in collecting evidence upon it, and has issued some valuable 

 reports. During the present year an association of curators 

 and others interested in museums has been founded for the 

 purpose of interchange of ideas upon the organisation and 

 management of these institutions. It is a subject, moreover, 

 if I may be allowed to mention a personal reason for bringing 

 it forward this evening, which has, more than any other, 

 occupied my time and my attention almost from the earliest 

 period of my recollection, and I think you will agree with the 

 opinion of one of my distinguished predecessors in this chair, 

 "that the holder of this office will generally do better by 

 giving utterance to what has already become part of his own 

 thought than by gathering matter outside of its habitual range 

 for the special occasion. For," continued Mr. Spottiswoode, 

 " the interest (if any) of an address consists not so much in 

 the multitude of things therein brought forward as in the 

 individuality of the mode in which they are treated." 



The first recorded institution which bore the name of 

 museum, or temple or haunt of the Muses, was that founded 

 by Ptolemy Soter at Alexandria about 300 B.C.; but this 

 was not a museum in our sense of the word, but rather, in 

 accordance with its etymology, a place appropriated to the 

 cultivation of learning, or which was frequented by a society 

 or academy of learned men devoting themselves to philosophical 

 studies and the improvement of knowledge. 



Although certain great monarchs, as Solomon of Jerusalem 

 and Augustus of Eome, displayed their taste and their 

 magnificence by assembling together in their palaces curious 

 objects brought from distant parts of the world, although it 

 is said that the liberality of Philip and Alexander supplied 

 Aristotle with abundant materials for his researches, of the 

 existence of any permanent or public collections of natural 

 objects among the ancients there is no record. Perhaps the 

 nearest approach to such collections may be found in the 

 preservation of remarkable specimens, sometimes associated 

 with superstitious veneration, sometimes with strange legendary 



