12 "" REPORT— 1889. 



institatioD. Their fate is, unfortunately, far otherwise. Dirty, neglected, 

 without label, their identity lost, they are often finally devoured by in- 

 sects or cleared away to make room on the crowded shelves for the new 

 donation of some fresh patron of the institution. It would be far better 

 that such museums should never be founded. They are traps into which 

 precious — sometimes priceless — objects fall only to be destroyed ; and, 

 "what is still worse, they bring discredit on all similar institutions, 

 make the very name of museum a byword and a reproach, hindering 

 instead of advancing the recognition of their value as agents in the great 

 educational movement of the age. 



A museum is like a living organism — it requires continual and tender 

 care. It must grow, or it will perish ; and the cost and labour required to 

 maintain it in a state of vitality is not yet by any means fully realised or 

 provided for, either in our great national establishments or in our smaller 

 local institutions. 



Often as it has been said, it cannot be too often repeated, that the real 

 objects of forming collections, of whatever kind (apart, of course, from 

 the mere pleasure of acquisition — sometimes the only motive of private 

 collectors), and which, although in very different degrees^ and often 

 "without being recognised, underlie the organisation of all museums, are 

 two, which are quite distinct, and sometimes even conflicting. The first 

 is to advance or increase the knowledge of some given subject. This is 

 generally tlie motive of the individual collector, whose experience shows 

 him the vast assistance in forming definite ideas in any line of research 

 in which he may be occupied that may be derived from having the 

 materials for its study at his own command, to hold and to handle, to 

 examine and compare, to take up and lay aside whenever the favourable 

 moment to do so occurs. But unless his subject is a very limited one, or 

 his means the reverse, he soon finds the necessity of consulting collections 

 based on a larger scale than his own. Very few people have any idea of 

 the multiplicity of specimens required for the purpose of working out 

 many of the simplest problems concerning the life-history of animals or 

 plants. The naturalist has frequently to ransack all the museums, both 

 public and private, of Europe and America in the endeavour to compose 

 a monograph of a single common genus, or even species, that shall include 

 all questions of its variation, changes in different seasons, and under 

 different climates and conditions of existence, and the distribution in 

 space and time of all its modifications. He often has to confess at the 

 end that he has been baffled in his research for want of the requisite 

 materials for such an undertaking. Of course this ought not to be, and 

 the time will come when it will not be, but that time is very far off yet. 



"We all know the old saying that the craving for riches grows as the 

 wealth itself increases. Something similar is true of scientific collections 

 brought together for the purpose of advancing knowledge. The larger 

 they are the more their deficiencies seem to become conspicuous ; the 



