ADDEESS. 5 



Tbo first recorded institution which bore the name of museum, or 

 temple or haunt of the Mus: s, 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 Rome, di.'jplayed their taste and their magnificence by assem- 

 bling together in their palaces curious objects brought from distant parts 

 of the world — although it is said that the liberality of Philip and Alex- 

 ander 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 stories, in the buildings devoted to religiourj 

 worship. The skius 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 miscel- 

 laneous 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 con- 

 nections 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 gratifica- 

 tion 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 mnseum is that 

 of Samuel Quickelberg, a physician of Amsterdam, published in 1565 in 

 Munich. In the same year Conrad Gesner published a catalogne of the 

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

 ing of about 1,600 objects, chiefly minerals, shells, and marine animals. 

 Very soon afterwards we find the Emperor Rudolph II. of Germany busily 

 accumulating treasures which constituted the foundations of the present 

 magnificent museums by which the Austrian capital is distinguished. 



In England the earliest important collectors of miscellaneous objects 



