On the objects and management of provincial museums : an address delivered at Canterbury, October, 1871, to a meeting of the East Kent Natural History Society / by George Gulliver.

  • Gulliver, George, 1804-1882.
Date:
[1871]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the objects and management of provincial museums : an address delivered at Canterbury, October, 1871, to a meeting of the East Kent Natural History Society / by George Gulliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON THE OBJECTS AND MANAGEMENT OP PEOYINCIA. MUSEUMS. (o ^ (An Address delivered at Canterbury, October, 1871, to a Meetin of the East Kent Natural History Society, by its Honorary Secretar and Yice-President, George Gulliver, F.R.S.) Although every intelligent person knows more or less what thes institutions are, and what they ought to be, there is probably m subject, connected with the modern means of education in natura science, concerning which so much misconception or ignorance i manifested and tolerated as in the Management and Objects of ou Provincial Museums. The majority of them throughout Englan present such examples of helpless misdirection and incapacity a could not be paralleled elsewhere- in Europe. Some noteworthy ex ceptions there are, as at IpswioG, Ludlow, and elsewhere; and ii some parts of our own county, an intelligent spirit has of late bee] shewn. The municipal authorities at Folkestone have not onk consigned their Museum to the care of the Natural History Society of that place, but have given besides some pecuniary aid, while th* apartments are now gratuitously available for the scientific meetings At our great Universities, too, such judicious and honest activity has prevailed as is beyond all praise and puts them out of the paleo: strictures applicable to other quarters. And no wonder, seeing tha at Oxford and Cambridge competent and eminent men are at work and not at all disposed to admit of the incubus of meddling anc incompetent persons. But generally the managers or guardians o those Local Museums that are supported by public rates are precisely of this unfit class, and seem to have no more notion of their charge than as mere curiosity shops; and even display less intelligence than is shewn in such shops, where the cupidity or shrewdness of the dealer induces him at least to take due care of, and give a local habitation and a name to, his wares. But in the Provincial Museums even this care and tittle of information is -withheld, and the visitors are left to do the best they can amid the surrounding bewilder- ment. This is commonly made up of a most puzzling jumble of heterogeneous miscellanies, arranged or rather scattered with an equally sovereign contempt for the convenience or instruction of the public, and indeed all in such admired disorder as may most plainly show how Chaos is come again and Confusion can make his masterpiece, and how every specimen added to the heap only tends to increase or perpetuate the miserable derangement, it looks as if the presiding