12 MUSEUM ORGANISATION i 



which are well within the capacity of comparatively modest 

 administrative means to remedy, that I have now to speak. 



That great improvements have been lately effected in 

 many respects in some of the museums in this country, on the 

 Continent, and especially in America, no one can deny. The 

 subject, as I have already indicated, is exciting the attention 

 of those who have the direction of them, and even awakening 

 interest in the mind of the general public. It is in the hope 

 of in some measure helping on or guiding this movement that 

 I have ventured on the remarks which follow. 



The first consideration in establishing a museum, large or 

 small, either in a town, institution, society, or school, is that 

 it should have some definite object or purpose to fulfil ; and 

 the next is that means should be forthcoming not only to 

 establish but also to maintain the museum in a suitable 

 manner to fulfil that purpose. Some persons are enthusiastic 

 enough to think that a museum is in itself so good an object 

 that they have only to provide a building and cases and a 

 certain number of specimens, no matter exactly what, to fill 

 them, and then the thing is done ; whereas the truth is the 

 work has only then begun. What a museum really depends 

 upon for its success and usefulness is not its building, not its 

 cases, not even its specimens, but its curator. He and his 

 staff are the life and soul of the institution, upon whom its 

 whole value depends ; and yet in many I may say most of 

 our museums they are the last to be thought of. The care, 

 the preservation, the naming of the specimens are either left to 

 voluntary effort excellent often for special collections and for 

 a limited time, but never to be depended on as a permanent 

 arrangement, or a grievously undersalaried and consequently 

 uneducated official is expected to keep in order, to clean, dust, 

 arrange, name, and display in a manner which will contribute 

 to the advancement of scientific knowledge, collections ranging 

 in extent over almost every branch of human learning, from the 

 contents of an ancient British barrow to the last discovered 

 bird of paradise from New Guinea. 



Valuable specimens not unfrequently find their way into 

 museums thus managed. Their public-spirited owners fondly 

 imagine that they will be preserved and made of use to the 



