PROCEEDINGS-PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE, lxxxiii 
portion of the public duty of the State or of any municipal body had, 
however, nowhere entered into the mind of man at the beginning of the 
last century. Even the great teaching bodies, the Universities (whose 
museums are now, next to the National ones, the most important 
in the country), were slow in acquiring collections, but it must be re¬ 
membered that the subjects considered most essential to the education 
they then professed to give were not those which needed illustration 
from the objects which could be brought together in a museum. 
Notwithstanding the multiplication of public museums during the 
present century, and the resources and advantages which many of them 
possess, so much greater than those which private collectors can com¬ 
mand, the spirit of accumulation in individuals has happily not passed 
away, although it is usually directed into rather different channels than 
formerly. The general museum and miscellaneous collections of old 
times are now left to Governments and Institutions which afford 
greater guarantee of their permanence and public utility, while admir¬ 
able service is done to science by those private persons with leisure 
and means who, devoting themselves to some special subject, amass 
the materials by which its study can be prosecuted in detail, either by 
themselves, or by those whom they know to be qualified to do so ; 
which collections, if they fulfil their most appropriate destiny, ulti¬ 
mately become incorporated, by gift or purchase, in one or other 
of the public museums, and then serve as permanent factors in the 
education of the nation, or rather of the world. 
The great national State-supported museums which now exist in 
every civilised country have certain definite purposes in view, and 
methods of management, which it is quite unnecessary to discuss 
now. No provincial or local institution is able to enter into com¬ 
petition with them, especially in the means they can or ought to 
supply of advancing detailed knowledge by exhaustive collections in 
every subject. To the extent of such an institution as the British 
Museum there ought to be no limits but those imposed by Nature 
herself. In the case of all other museums, large or small, belonging 
either to a town, institution, society, or school, the first considera¬ 
tion in establishing it is, that it should have some definite and 
limited object or purpose to fulfil, and the next is, that means should 
be forthcoming, not only to establish it, but also to maintain it in a 
suitable manner to fulfil that purpose. Some persons are enthusi¬ 
astic enough to think that a museum is in itself so good an object that 
they have only to provide a building and cases, and a certain number 
of specimens, no matter exactly what, to fill them, and then the thing 
is done, whereas in truth the work is then only begun. What a 
museum really depends upon for its success and usefulness is not its 
building, nor its cases, nor even its specimens, but its curator. He 
and his staff are the life and soul of the institution, upon whom its 
whole value depends; and yet in many—I may say in most of our 
museums—they are the last to be thought of. You might as well 
build a church and expect it to perform the duties required of it with¬ 
out a minister, or a school without a schoolmaster, or a garden with¬ 
out a gardener, as to build a museum and not provide a competent 
staff to take care of it. And yet how often is that done. I am sorry 
