Notes on zoological museums / by J.E. Gray.

  • Gray, John Edward, 1800-1875.
Date:
[1864]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on zoological museums / by J.E. Gray. 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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    7ZZa^ I%ES ON ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUMS. ^ cBy Dr. J. E. GRAY, F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., &c. <0 f ■ The President’s Address at the Opening of the Natural History Section of the British Association at Bath, 1864. I should wish, to say a few words on the subject of Public Museums. It may be imagined that, having the whole of my life been intimately connected with the management of what I believe to be at tbe present day the most important zoological museum in the world, it is a subject that has long and deeply occupied my thoughts ; and it will also be readily believed that it is only after serious and prolonged consideration I have come to the conclusion that the plan hitherto pursued in their arrange- ment has rendered them less useful to science and less interesting to the public at large than they might have been made under a different system. Let us consider the purposes for which such a museum is established. These are two: 1st, the diffusion of instruction and rational amusement among the mass of the people; and 2nd, to afford the scientific student every possible means of examining and studying the specimens of which the museum consists. Noav it appears to me that, in the desire to combine these two objects, which are essentially distinct, the first object, namely the general instruction of the people, has been to a great extent lost sight of and sacrificed to the second, without any corresponding advantage to the latter, because the system itself has been thoroughly erroneous. The curators of large museums have naturally, and, perhaps, properly, been men more deeply devoted to scientific study than interested in elementary instruction, and they have consequently done what they thought best for the promotion of science by accumulating and exhibiting on the shelves or in the open cases of the museum every specimen which they possess, without considering that by so doing they were overwhelming the general visitor with a mass of unintelli- gible objects, and at the same time rendering their attentive study by the man of science more difficult and onerous than if they had been brought into a smaller space and in a more available condition. What the largest class of visitors, the general public, want is a collection of the more interesting objects so arranged as to B