cHAP.xm EARLY MUSEUMS i8i 



and an opinion as to what they could or could not 

 do to advance knowledge. 



In the historical part of the address he stated 

 that though the first " museum " was founded by 

 Ptolemy Soter at Alexandria about the year 300 

 B.C., it was really an academy. The first Natural 

 History Museum was the Temple at Carthage, 

 where Hanno hung up the skins of the gorillas 

 which he^ brought home from the West Coast of 

 Africa. The earliest printed catalogue of a museum 

 is that of Samuel Quellenberg, a physician of 

 Amsterdam, published in 1568 in Munich; but in 

 the same year Conrad Gesner published a catalogue 

 of the collection of Johann Ventmann, a physician 

 of Torgau, in Saxony, consisting of about 1600 

 objects, chiefly minerals, shells, and marine animals. 

 Shortly afterwards the Emperor Rudolph II. began 

 to accumulate the treasures which proved the 

 beginning of the great Museum of Vienna. The 

 first miscellaneous museum collection, largely of 

 objects of Natural History, was made by the two 

 John Tradescants, father and son. The son pub- 

 lished in 1656 a catalogue of this "Collection of 

 Rarities," preserved at South Lambeth, near 

 London. The first division was devoted to "Some 

 Kindes of Birds, their Egges, Beaks, Feathers, 

 Claws, and Spurres." Among them were " Divers 

 sorts of Egges, one given for a Dragon's Egge," 

 " Easter Egges of the Patriarch of Jerusalem," 

 "Two feathers of the Phoenix tayle," and "the 



