MUSEUM ORGANISATION 



j stories, in the buildings devoted to religious worship. The 

 skins of the gorillas brought by the navigator Hanno from 

 the West Coast of Africa, and hung up in the temple at 

 Carthage, afford a well-known instance. 



With the revival of learning in the Middle Ages, the 



' collecting instinct, inborn in so many persons of various 



nations and periods of history, but so long in complete 



abeyance, sprang into existence with considerable vigour, and 



a museum, now meaning a collection of miscellaneous objects, 



-/' antiquities as well as natural curiosities, often associated with 

 a gallery of sculpture and painting, became a fashionable 

 appendage to the establishment of many wealthy persons of 

 superior culture. 



All the earliest collections, comparable to what we call 

 museums, were formed by and maintained at the expense of 

 private individuals ; sometimes physicians, whose studies 



^ naturally led them to a taste for biological science ; often 

 great merchant princes, whose trading connections afforded 

 opportunities for bringing together things that were considered 



<- curious from foreign lands ; or ruling monarchs in their private 

 capacity. In every case they were maintained mainly for the 

 gratification of the possessor or his personal friends, and 

 rarely, if ever, associated with any systematic teaching or 

 public benefit. 



One of the earliest known printed catalogues of such a 

 museum is that of Samuel Quickelberg, a physician of 

 Amsterdam, published in 1565 in Munich. In the same 

 year Conrad Gesner published a catalogue of the collection of 

 Johann Kentmann, a physician of Torgau in Saxony, consist- 

 ing of about 1600 objects, chiefly minerals, shells, and marine 

 animals. Very soon afterwards we find the Emperor Eudolph 

 II. of Germany busily accumulating treasures which con- 

 stituted the foundations of the present magnificent museums 

 by which the Austrian capital is distinguished. 



In England the earliest important collectors of miscellaneous 

 objects were the two John Tradescants, father and son, the 



\/ latter of whom published, in 1656, a little work called 

 Musceum Tradescantianum ; or, a Collection of Rarities preserved 

 at South LambetJiy neer London. The wonderful variety and 



