^86 EEPORT — 1886. 



6. On Provincial Museums, their Work and Value. 

 By F. T. MoTT, F.B.G.8. 



Provincial museums are at present very unsatisfactory institutions, but there is 

 an undeveloped capacity in them which, once recognised, would put them on a new 

 footing. A provincial museum should be a complete monograph of its own parti- 

 cular district, illustrated throughout with actual specimens, and the preparation of 

 it should be set about in a systematic manner and completed as rapidly as possible. 

 The natural history, botany, and geology of the district should be lirst undertaken ; 

 then the antiquities, the agriculture, the manufactures, arts, and political history 

 in succession as distinct departments, each worked out in the most complete 

 manner. 



The advantages would be — (1) that this is work wliich can never be done 

 elsewhere, and would render the museum unique ; (2) that it is work which can 

 be made complete, whereas anything else will be fragmentary and imperfect ; 

 (3) that it will furnish information especially interesting to the inhabitants and 

 of real value to science. 



The staff required for the natural history will be two curators, one workman, 

 and four paid collectors, and the expense wiU be about 1,000^. a year for two years, 

 the buUding being otherwise provided. No reliance must be placed on amateur 

 collectino- — it is too slow and desultory. Every living creature, vertebrate and in- 

 vertebrate, indigenous to the district must have its whole life-history illustrated. 

 Labels must be plentiful with the English and local names prominent. A room 

 70 feet by 40 will take the whole of the local vertebrates in wall-cases, and the 

 invertebrates in table-cases. 



When the natural history is completed the annual expense for the botany and 

 geology may be reduced to 700Z. a year for two years more. 



Each of the other departments may be completed in a single year, at the same 

 annual cost, and when the whole ground is covered a permanent income of GOOl. 

 a year will be sufficient. 



The curators' attention must then be continually directed to devising and carry- 

 ing out plans for making the museum available in every possible way for reference 

 and for education. 



There is no town in England in which the inhabitants would grudge the half- 

 penny or penny rate for a museum so constructed and so worked. 



FRIBAY, SEPTEMBER 3. 



The following Papers were read ; — 



1. On Some Points in the Development of Monotr ernes. 

 By W. H. Caldwell, M.A. 



2. On the Morphology oj the Mammalian Coracoid.^ 

 By Professor Howes, F.L.8. 



T he author shows that the importance of a third centre of ossification of the 

 mam malian shoulder-girdle has been overlooked. He claims that it is homologous 

 with the true coracoid bone of the lower vertebrata, basing his determination upon 

 a stu dy of the facts as they stand in the common rabbit ; the coracoid process he 

 hold s to be the morphological equivalent of the monotreme epicoracoid. He further 

 upholds the view that the mammalian coracoid has been derived from a primarily 

 expanded sheet-like type ; fenestration thereof, the rule among the lower amniota, 

 bein g the exception among mammals. He describes the shoulder-girdle of the 



' Published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology , Jan. 1887. 



