38 REPORT-—1896. 
A delegate having inquired when the next Conference would take 
place, the Chairman replied that it would be next year at Toronto. 
The following Paper by Professor Flinders Petrie was then read :— 
On a Federal Staff for Local Museums. 
The present suggestions only affect a distribution of labour, and will 
rather economise than require extra expenditure. 
In all local museums the main difficulty of the management is that 
there is neither money nor work enough fora highly trained and competent 
man. It is in any case impossible to get a universal genius who can deal 
with every class of object equally well, and hardly any local museum can 
afford to pay for a first-class curator on any one subject. These difficulties 
are entirely the result of a want of co-operation. 
According to the report of the Committee in 1887, there are fifty-six 
Ist class, fifty-five 2nd class, sixty-three 3rd class, and thirty 4th class 
museums in the kingdom. Setting aside the last two classes as mostly too 
poor to pay except for mere caretaking, there are 111 in the other classes ; 
and deducting a few of the 1st class museums as being fully provided, 
there are 100 museums, all of which endeavour to keep up to the mark by 
spending perhaps 30/. to 200/. a year on a curator. 
The practical course would seem to be their union, in providing a 
federal staff, to circulate for ail purposes requiring skilled knowledge ; 
leaving the permanent attention to each place to devolve on a mere 
caretaker. If half of these Ist and 2nd class museums combined in 
paying 30/. a year each, there would be enough to pay three first-rate 
men 500/. a year apiece, and each museum would have a week of atten- 
tion in the year from a geologist, and the same from a zoologist and an 
archeologist. 
The duties of such a stafl’ would be to arrange and label the new 
specimens acquired in the past year, taking sometimes a day, or perhaps a 
fortnight, at one place ; to advise on alterations and improvements ; tc 
recommend purchases required to fill up gaps; to note duplicates and 
promote exchanges between museums ; and to deliver a lecture on the 
principal novelties of their own subject in the past year. Such visitants, 
if well selected, would probably be welcome guests at the houses of some 
of those interested in the museum in each place. 
The effect at the country museums would be that three times in the 
year a visitant would arrive for one of the three sections, would work 
everything up to date, stir the local interests by advice and a lecture, 
stimulate the caretaker, and: arrange routine work that could be carried 
out before the next year’s visit, and yet would rot cost more than having 
down three lecturers for the local institution or society, apart from this 
work. 
To many, perhaps most, museums 30/. for skilled work, and 30/. or 
40/. for a caretaker, would be an economy on their present expenditure, 
while they would get far better attention. Such a system could not be 
suddenly started ; but if there were an official base for it, curators could 
interchange work according to their specialities, and as each museum post 
fell vacant it might be placed in commission among the best curators in 
that district, until by gradual selection the most competent men were 
attached to forty or fifty museums to be served in rotation. It is not im- 
possible that the highest class of the local museums might be glad to 
