HISTOEICAL SKETCH. 
105 
HISTOEICAL SKETCH. 
The British Museum dates its actual foundation from the year Foundation. 
1753, when an Act of Parliament was passed "for the j^urchase 
of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the 
Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing One 
General Eepository for the better Eeception and more convenient 
Use of the said Collections and of the Cottom'an Library and of 
the Additions thereto." 
Sir Hans Sloane, an eminent physician in London, was for Sir Hans 
sixteen years President of the Eoyal College of Physicians, 
and in 1727 succeeded Sir Isaac Kewton in the Presidential 
Chair of the Eoyal Society. He was throughout his long 
life a diligent and miscellaneous collector, having, as stated in 
the Preamble of the Act of Incorporation of the Museum, 
" through the course of many years, with great labour and 
expense, gathered together whatever could be procured, either 
in our own or foreign countries, that was rare and curious." 
His collection, which at the time of his death in 1753 was 
contained in his residence, the Manor House, Chelsea, consisted 
of " books, drawings, manuscripts, prints, medals, and coins, 
ancient and modern antiquities, seals, cameos and intaglios, 
precious stones, agates, jaspers, vessels of agate and jasper, 
crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures, and other tilings," 
which latter included numerous zoological and geological speci- 
mens, and an extensive herbarium of dried plants preserved in 
310 large folio volumes. 
According to the terms of Sir Hans Sloane's will, tliis collec- 
tion was purchased for the sum of £20,000 — far below its 
intrinsic value — in order " that it might be preserved and 
maintained, not only for the inspection and entertainment of 
the learned and the curious, but for the general use and benefit 
of the public to all posterity." 
