TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 865 
the completest collections of all the races of the Empire? It must be admittel, 
however, not only that we have no national collection of the kind, but that other 
nations are ahead of us in this matter. This could be readily understood if their 
sources of supply were at all comparable to ours. But this is, of course, very far 
from being the case. The sources are oursingreat part, and if we stand inactive 
it is not unlikely that some will be exhausted when we do come to draw upon them. 
It is, perhaps, better to give here a case in point rather than to rely on general 
statements./ In the summer of last year I arranged, with the approval of the} 
Trustees, that Mr. Dalton, one of the officers of my department, should make a 
tour of inspection of the ethnographical museums of Germany,/with a definite 
object in view, but at the same time that he should make a general survey 
of their system and resources as compared with our own. The report which he 
drew up on his return was printed and has recently been communicated to the 
newspapers ; it is therefore not necessary to allude to it now, except to quote one 
instance confirming my statement that it is to a great extent from our colonies 
that material is being drawn../ Mr. Dalton says: ‘On a moderate estimate the 
Berlin collections are six or seven times as extensive as ours. To mention 
a single point, the British province of Assam is represented in Berlin by a 
whole room and in London by a single case.’ But even this, forcible though it is, 
does not adequately represent the vast difference between the material at the 
disposal of the two countries. For it is the habit of the collectors for the German 
museums to procure duplicates or triplicates of every object, for the purposes of 
exchange or study. It is thus not unlikely that the whole room referred to 
represents only a part of the Berlin collection from the British province of Assam. 
In making these observations, I should be sorry if it were thought that I wish to 
advocate a dog-in-the-manger policy, or that I consider it either desirable or 
olitic to place any restriction upon scientific work in our colonial possessions, even 
if such restrictions were possible. IL jwould prefer to look at the matter from an 
entirely different point of view. If the German people, who are admittedly 
practical and businesslike, think it worth whils, with their limited colonies, to 
spend so much time and money on the establishment of a royal museum of 
ethnography, how much more is it our duty to establish and maintain one, and 
on a scale that shall bear some relation to the magnitude of our Empire. The 
value of such museums is by no means confined to the scientific inquirer, but they 
may equally be made to serve the purpose of the trader and the public at large. 
How can we best obtain such a museum? Thatis the question that we have 
to answer. It is scarcely profitable to expect that the Government will be stirred to 
emulation by the description of the size and resources of the Museum fiir Volker- 
kunde in Berlin. In the British Museum there is at the present time only the 
most limited accommodation even for the collections already housed there, and I 
am well aware that these form a very inadequate representation of the subject. 
It may be thought that the solution of this difficulty is easy. It is well known 
that the Government has purchased the rest of the block of land on which the 
British Museum stands, and it may seem that such a liberal extension as this 
will form should be enough for, at any rate, a generation or two, and that a little 
additional building would meet immediate wants, and enable the collections, now 
so painfully crowded, to be set out in an instructive and interesting way. I admit 
that if the whole of the contemplated buildings were at this moment complete, and 
at least double as much space given to the ethnographical collections as they occupy at 
present, the difficulty would be much simplified. The collections could at any rate be 
then displayed far more worthily and usefully. Even this, however, would hardly 
meet the case, even if there were a certainty of the buildings being immediately 
begun. Such works as these, however, can only be executed in sections during the 
course of each financial year. Thus, even if a Chancellor of the Exchequer could be 
found to fall in entirely with the views of the Trustees, it would still be an appre- 
ciable number of years before the completion of the entire range of galleries that is 
contemplated. For this reason alone I do not look forward to obtaining the space 
that is even now urgently wanted for some time. Meanwhile the natural and 
legitimate increase of the collections at the rate of about 1 to 2 per cent. per annum 
1899, 3K 
