Report of Society's Meetings. 155 
of the Museum was read : — 
British Guiana Museum, 
2nd Januarv, 1882. 
To W. H. Campbell, Esq., 
Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence. 
Sir, — In resuming charge of the Museum, there are several points, 
which I wish to lay before the Committee of Correspondence. 
1st. Concerning the catalogue of the Museum. When I was last 
in charge of the Museum, I drew up a catalogue which I took home 
with me, to be printed after various specimens which went home with 
me should have been named and inserted in the list. There having been 
much unavoidable delay in the naming of these specimens, which I have 
now brought back to the colony, the catalogue was not in the printers' 
hands when it became apparent that I should probably return to this 
colony. Taking, therefore, into consideration that many changes, affect- 
ing the correctness of the catalogue, had probably taken place in the 
Museum during my absence, and that my ideas of the best arrangement 
of a Colonial Museum had been so much altered by what I had seen in 
England that I should probably re-arrange the contents of the British 
Guiana Museum if it were again given into my charge, I thought it 
best to bring the catalogue back with me in MS., and to endeavour to 
obtain your permission to print it in the colony, merely roughly and 
with such alterations as the lapse of time has made absolutely neces- 
sary, in order that this rough catalogue may serve as a hand list to be 
used in the gradual preparation of a complete and full catalogue, which 
may be printed either at home or here, as circumstances may direct. I 
have now, therefore to ask your consent to this arrangement. 
2nd. Having referred ^n the previous paragraph to the fact that my 
ideas of the best arrangement of a Colonial Museum have been altered 
by my recent experiences in England, I have now to explain what my 
present views are. When I was last in the colony I divided the con- 
tents of the museum into a colonial and an extra-colonial collection : 
and I am still fully pursuaded that that arrangement is most desirable. 
But, whereas I before aimed at the exhibition in glass cases of as nearly 
complete a collection of colonial products as possible, I now wish to 
exhibit only a typical collection of these products, and to keep a more 
complete collection in drawers for the use of those who really wish to 
study. I have been led to this conclusion by the facts (1st) it is im- 
U I 
