4 
Annals of the Transvaal Museum, 
Teaching in Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy and allied 
Sciences was much impeded by the want of books suitable 
for South African schools, and ocular demonstration of the 
objects of Natural History in the Museum collection was to 
assist in the teaching of these subjects, where handbooks were 
often of little value. 
Of course, systematic collections of all animals, plants 
and minerals, to be found within the boundaries of the 
Republic were to be made for systematic scientific work, but 
with the educational object in view considerable sums of money 
were spent to procure types of families and groups of Mammals 
and Birds which do not occur in South Africa, but which are 
mentioned in the handbooks in use here at the time. 
Later on a very extensive collection of minerals and fossils 
was purchased by the Museum to serve with the instruction 
in Mineralogy and Geology in the School of Mines. This 
collection is at present on loan and temporarily embodied in 
the collections of the Geological Survey. 
The second and certainly not less important aim with 
the founding of the State Museum was the fostering of 
the love of the country, the stimulating of the national pride, 
the encouraging of the consciousness in the people that this 
State was but a part of a homogeneous complex of States 
and Colonies in South Africa, that the past of all these 
countries was the same, that the great men and great heroes 
of each component part belong ipso jacto to the remainder, 
that origin, present and future, were and should ever be one 
and the same. 
In order to portray the past clearly before the mind’s 
eye of the present and future generations, in order to instil 
love and respect for those who helped to shape the destiny 
of the South African nation as a whole, great attention was 
to be paid to the collecting of historical relics, first of all in 
connection with persons and matters of this country, and 
further in connection with all South Africa. 
We, therefore, find that all appeals made to the public for 
support, and all circulars issued during the first years of the 
Museum’s existence lay special stress on these main thoughts : 
the Museum shall be Educational and therefore be in constant 
touch with teachers and pupils which it shall reach through 
the Education Department, and the Museum shall be 
Historical , i i.e ., it shall show the history of the past, and by 
fostering love and respect for a glorious past shall be instru- 
mental in building up a noble South African nation. 
