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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
tion of our collections in order. From that time forward the sub- 
ject has never been allowed to drop, and my respected predecessor 
in this chair, in his presidential address in 1879, struck a key-note 
to which there was a hearty response within these walls. Failing 
the adoption of the scheme by the town at large, the initiative was 
taken by this Society. We could not do all we wished, but we 
resolved to do what we could. We determined that, so far as the 
efforts of the Plymouth Institution went, Plymouth should no 
longer rest under the reproach of being Museumless. We saw that 
the possession of a valuable site, of large and important collections, 
of a working staff, would enable a comparatively moderate expendi- 
ture in our hands to produce results that twice the money applied 
independently would fail to secure ; and we resolved, not indeed 
without some questionings, to proceed. Under Mr. Brooking Rowe's 
presidency plans for a Museum and Art Gallery were prepared. 
They have been carried out and completed in my own. In response 
to our earnest appeal friends rallied round us, and not without diffi- 
culty, not without debt, our work is so far done that we have the 
pleasure of inviting you here to-day to celebrate the opening of the 
New Museum. I trust and believe the results will be found an 
ample return for the money and the pains expended. 
Thanks to the untiring labours of our predecessors our Museum 
is already fairly furnished (I wish we could say as much of our Art 
Gallery, but that will come). We cannot praise too highly the 
zeal and scientific assiduity of such men as Hamilton Smith, Richard 
Hennah, John Prideaux, W. E. Leach, Edward Moore, W. S. Hore, 
J. S. Bellamy, P. F. Bellamy, and their associates, the traces of 
whose influence and handiwork are seen on every hand. They 
brought together collections which in some respects are unrivalled, 
and which, though thinned by inevitable decay, and deteriorated 
by neglect compelled by want of arrangement space, are yet of the 
highest scientific and even historic value. 
You will find in our Museum cases the original specimens by 
which Richard Hennah established the fossiliferous character of the 
lime rocks of Plymouth, and some at least of those which illustrated 
John Prideaux's first paper on our local geology, and of those which 
are figured in Bellamy's Natural History of South Devon. We 
have relics of Whidbey's discoveries of the extinct mammalia at 
Oreston, and the famous Kent's Cavern is represented by choice 
collections from its original explorers — Northmore and McEnery. 
