TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 827 



in the hope that it mio-ht form the nucleus of a large educational museum arranged 

 upon the system of development which I had adopted. A very competent committee 

 was appointed to consider the offer, which recommended that it should be accepted, 

 but the Government declined to do so ; one of the reasons assigned being that 

 some of the authorities of the British Museum thought it undesirable that two 

 ethnographical museums should exist in London at the same time ; this, however, 

 entirely waives the question of the totally different objects that the two museums 

 (at least that part of them which relates to ethnographical specimens) are intended 

 to serve. 



The British Museum, with its enormous treasures of art, is itself only in a 

 molluscous and invertebrate condition of development. For the education of the 

 masses it is of no use whatever. It produces nothing but confusion in the minds 

 of those who wander through its long galleries with but little knowledge of the 

 periods to which the objects contained in them relate. The necessity of storing all 

 that can be obtained, and all that is presented to them in the way of specimens, 

 precludes the possibility of a scientific or an educational arrangement. 



By the published returns of the Museum it appears that there has been a gradual 

 falling off in the number of visitors since 1882, when the number was 767,873, to 

 1887, when it had declined to 501,256. This may be partly owing to the increased 

 claims of bands and switchbacks upon public attention, but it cannot be owing to 

 the removal of the Natural History Museum to South Kensington, as has been 

 suggested, because the space formerly occupied by those collections at Bloomsbury 

 has since been filled with objects of greater general interest, and the galleries have 

 been considerably enlarged. 



The Science and Art Department at South Kensington has done much for higher 

 education, but for the education of the masses it is of no more use than the 

 British Museum, for the same reason, that its collections are not arranged in se- 

 quence, and its galleries are not properly adapted for such an arrangement. Besides 

 these e.stablishments, annual exhibitions on a prodigious scale have been held in 

 London for many years, at an enormous cost, hut at the present time not the 

 slightest trace of these remains, and I am not aware of any permanent good that 

 has resulted from them. If one-tenth of the cost of these temporary exhibitions 

 had been devoted to permanent collections, we should by this time have the finest 

 industrial museum in the world. Throughout the whole series of these annual 

 temporary collections, only one, viz., the American department of the Fisheries 

 E.xhibition, was arranged upon scientific principles, and that was arranged upon the 

 plan adopted by the National Museum at Washington . It appears probable from 

 the experience of the present year that tiiese annual exhibitions are on the decline. 

 Large iron buildings have been erected in different places, some of which would 

 meet all the requirements of a permanent museum. The Olympia occupies 3| acres, 

 the Italian Exhibition as much as 7 acres. There can be little doubt, I think, 

 that the long avenues of potted meats and other articles of commonplace mer- 

 chandise, which now constitute the chief part of the objects exhibited in these 

 places, must before long cease to be attractive and must he replaced by something 

 else, and in view of such a change I venture to put in a plea for a national anthro- 

 pological museum upon a large scale, using the term in its broadest sense, 

 arranged stratigraphically in concentric rings upon the plan of the diagram now 

 exhibited. It is a large proposal, no doubt, but one wliich, considering the number 

 of years I have devoted to the subject, I hope I shall not be thought presumptuous in 

 submitting for the consideration of the Anthropological Section of this Association. 



The palaeolithic period being the earliest, would occupy the central ring, and 

 having fewer varieties of form would require the smallest space. Next to it the 

 neolithic and bronze age would be arranged in two concentric rings, and would 

 contain, besides the relics of those periods, models of prehistoric monuments, bone 

 caves, and other places interesting on account of the prehistoric finds that have 

 been made in them. After that, in expanding order, would come Egyptian, Greek, 

 Assyrian, and Roman antiquities, to be followed by objects of the Anglo-Saxon, 

 Frankish, and Merovingian periods ; these again in developmental outward 

 expansion would be surrounded by mediaeval antiquities, and the outer rings of all 



