TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 989 
Buckinghamshire, part of Berks, and Hants. If land were to be purchased within 
this distance it seems that some reasonably cheap part might be found. But as 
we can afford to wait for opportunities, if the scheme be otherwise well formulated, 
it seems not chimerical to hope for the chance of an appropriation of open land for 
such a public purpose out of some of the numerous downs, commons, and heaths 
within the hour's distance. 
There remain some other questions that have been raised outside of the memo- 
randum :-— 
1. That the plan is impracticable for want of funds. The amount suggested is 
2,500/. a year. Supposing even that this was doubled, that would be 5,000U. a 
year. Now the British Museum alone has increased its budget by 100,000/. per 
annum within fifty or sixty years. Is, then, an increase of 5,0002. more not to be 
thought of for twenty or thirty years to come? Or, looking at’ capital expense, 
the cost of the small increase of room in the White Wing and Mausoleum Room 
has been much more than the capital cost of a space equal to half the museum. 
It may be safely said that long before we can hope to see this economical system in 
working order the British Museum budget will have increased by many times the 
amount required for this. 
2. The cost of packing and carriage of things from existing institutions would 
of course be met by those places which had the benefit of the relief of valuable 
space. For other cases of private donation 10 per cent. extra on the estimate would 
probably quite provide. In any case this cannot make the scheme unworkable. 
3. The proposal to avoid acquiring things that are not worth the most expen- 
sive accommodation in the city museums is fatal to scientific study. And equally 
fatal would be the idea of leaving all preservation to local museums, for the main 
purpose of this is not local English, but mankind in general—the colonies and 
other lands—as no student could be expected to visit Dakota, Brazil, Uganda, and 
Mongolia to collect the information he might need, even if there was a uniform 
appreciation in every country of the desirability of preserving history. 
The broad view remains untouched by all these minor details. We cannot at 
present preserve large quantities of irreplaceable antiquities and ethnographic 
specimens, owing to the existing costliness of museum accommodation, and which 
come from countries where no local museums are possible. By the time every 
country came up to the level of England in local museums there would be nothing 
left to preserve. And yet, making every allowance for the unexpected, and even 
tripling all the presumed costs, a space equal to the whole British Museum can be 
provided for less than the average increase in Government grants for museums 
during four or five years. So that if this repository should not be realised in less 
than twenty years hence—as I quite expect—the cost of it will have been spent 
many times over in increased grants, which will only provide an invisible fraction 
of the space that might thus be had. 
It is not proposed as an additional expense, but as a vastly more economical 
mode of spending the normal increase which is always being made on the existing 
lines. The real question is not whether money can be found—money is certain to 
be found during the next twenty years for fresh museum space. The real question 
is whether we shall have a small increase in our present London museums which 
cripple our study, or a great increase in another form which shall give a new life 
altogether to our study of man. 
2. The Duk Duk and other Customs as Forms of Expression of the 
Intellectual Life of the Melanesians. By Grar von Pret. 
The European who has a sufficiently prolonged experience of the natives of the 
Bismarck Archipelago is particularly struck by their very apparent desire towards 
physical and psychical seclusion. Left to themselves, the natives confine their 
intercourse to members of their own village and at most to those of immediately 
neighbouring villages. The fact is that twenty years’ intercourse with White Men 
has failed to win the natives to any of the ways of civilisation; they care more for 
the tobacco brought by the White Man than for anything else he brings them. 
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