sciences and all the arts are correlated. The wide separation
of collections illustrative of the arts (see Museums of Art above)
from those illustrative of the sciences, and their treatment as
if belonging to a wholly different sphere, is arbitrary. Such
separation, which is to-day the rule rather than the exception,
is due to the circumstances of the origin of many collections,
or in other cases to the limitations imposed by poverty or lack
of space. Many of the national museums of continental Europe
had their beginnings in collections privately acquired by
monarchs, who, at a time when the modern sciences were in their
infancy, entertained themselves by assembling objects which
appealed to their love of the beautiful and the curious. The
pictures, marbles, bronzes and bric-à-brac of the palace became
the nucleus of the museum of to-day, and in some notable cases
the palace itself was converted into a museum. In a few instances
these museums, in which works of art had the first place, have
been enriched and supplemented by collections illustrative of
the advancing sciences of a later date, but in a majority of cases
these collections have remained what they were at the outset,
mere exponents of human handicraft in one or the other, or all
of its various departments. Some recent great foundations
have copied the more or less defective models of the past, and
museums devoted exclusively to the illustration of one or the
other narrow segment of knowledge will no doubt continue to
be multiplied, and in spite of their limited range, will do much
good. A notable illustration of the influence of lack of space
in bringing about a separation of anthropological collections
from collections illustrative of other sciences is afforded by the
national collection in London. For many years the collections
of the British Museum, literary, artistic and scientific, were
assembled in ideal relationship in Bloomsbury, but at last the
accumulation of treasure became so vast and the difficulties of
administration were so pressing that a separation was decided
upon, and the natural history collections were finally removed
to the separate museum in Cromwell Road, South Kensington.
But the student of museums can never fail to regret that the
necessities of space and financial considerations compelled this
separation, which in a measure destroyed the ideal relationship
which had for so many years obtained.
The ancient world knew nothing of museums in the modern sense of the term. There were collections of paintings and statuary in the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome; the homes of the wealthy were everywhere adorned by works of art; curious objects of natural history were often brought from afar, as the skins of the female gorillas, which Hanno after his voyage on the west coast of Africa hung up in the temple of Astarte at Carthage; Alexander the Great granted to his illustrious teacher, Aristotle, a large sum of money for use in his scientific researches, sent him natural history collections from conquered lands, and put at his service thousands of men to collect specimens, upon which he based his work on natural history; the museum of Alexandria, which included within its keeping the Alexandrian library, was a great university composed of a number of associated colleges; but there was nowhere in all the ancient world an institution which exactly corresponded in its scope and purpose to the modern museum. The term “museum,” after the burning of the great institution of Alexandria, appears to have fallen into disuse from the 4th to the 17th century, and the idea which the word represented slipped from the minds of men.
The revival of learning in the 15th century was accompanied by an awakening of interest in classical antiquity, and many persons laboured eagerly upon the collection of memorials of the past. Statuary, inscriptions, gems, coins, medals and manuscripts were assembled by the wealthy and the learned. The leaders in this movement were presently followed by others who devoted themselves to the search for minerals, plants and curious animals. Among the more famous early collectors of objects of natural history may be mentioned Georg Agricola (1490–1555), who has been styled “the father of mineralogy.” By his labours the elector Augustus of Saxony was induced to establish the Kunst und Naturalien Kammer, which has since expanded into the various museums at Dresden. One of his contemporaries was Conrad Gesner of Zürich (1516–1565), “the German Pliny,” whose writings are still resorted to by the curious. Others whose names are familiar were Pierre Bélon (1517–1564), professor at the College de France; Andrea Cesalpini (1519–1603), . whose herbarium is still preserved at Florence; Ulissi Aldrovandi (1522–1605), remnants of whose collections still exist at Bologna; Ole Worm (1588–1654), a Danish physician, after whom the so-called “Wormian bones” of the skull are named, and who was one of the first to cultivate what is now known as the science of prehistoric archaeology. At a later date the collection of Albert Seba (1665–1736) of Amsterdam became famous, and was purchased by Peter the Great in 1716, and removed to St Petersburg. In Great Britain among early collectors were the two Tradescants; Sir John Woodward (1665–1728), a portion of whose collections, bequeathed by him to Cambridge University is still preserved there in the Woodwardian or Geological Museum; Sir James Balfour (1600–1657), and Sir Andrew Balfour (1630–1694), whose work was continued in part by Sir Robert Sibbald (1641–1722). The first person to elaborate and present to modern minds the thought of an institution which should assemble within its walls the things which men wish to see and study was Bacon, who in his New Atlantis (1627) broadly sketched the outline of a great national museum of science and art.
The first surviving scientific museum established upon a substantial basis was the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, founded by Elias Ashmole. The original collection had been made by the Tradescants, father and son, gardeners who were in the employment of the duke of Buckingham and later of King Charles I. and his queen; it consisted of “twelve cartloads of curiosities,” principally from Virginia and Algiers, which the younger Tradescant bequeathed to Ashmole, and which, after much litigation with Tradescant’s widow, he gave to Oxford upon condition that a suitable building should be provided. This was done in 1682 after plans by Sir Christopher Wren. Ashmole in his diary makes record, on the 17th of February 1683, that “the last load of my rareties was sent to the barge, and this afternoon I relapsed into the gout.”
The establishment of the German academy of Naturae Curiosi in 1652, of the Royal Society of London in 1660, and of the Académie des Sciences of Paris in 1666, imparted a powerful impulse to scientific investigation, which was reflected not only in the labours of a multitude of persons who undertook the formation of private scientific collections, but in the initiation by crowned heads of movements looking toward the formation of national collections, many of which, having their beginnings in the latter half of the 17th century and the early years of the 18th century, survive to the present day.
The most famous of all English collectors in his time was Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose vast collection, acquired at a great outlay of money, and including the collections of Petiver, Courten, Merret, Plukenet, and Buddle—all of which he had purchased—was by his will bequeathed to the British nation on condition that parliament should pay to his heirs the sum of £20,000, a sum far less than that which he had expended upon it, and representing, it is said, only the value of the coins which it contained. Sloane was a man who might justly have said of himself “humani nihil a me alienum puto”; and his collection attested the catholicity of his tastes and the breadth of his scientific appetencies. The bequest of Sloane was accepted upon the terms of his will, and, together with the library of George II., which had likewise been bequeathed to the nation, was thrown open to the public at Bloomsbury in 1759 as the British Museum. As showing the great advances which have occurred in the administration of museums since that day, the following extract taken from A Guide-Book to the General Contents of the British Museum, published in 1761, is interesting: “. . . fifteen persons are allowed to view it in one Company, the Time allotted is two Hours; and when any Number not exceeding fifteen are inclined to see it, they must send a List of their Christian and Sirnames, Additions, and Places of Abode, to the Porter’s Lodge, in order to their being entered in the Book; in a few Days the respective Tickets will be made out, specifying
