ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 21
All we can hope to do in our small museum is to appeal to the
student and the stranger ; whilst the specialist, bent on original
research, will naturally turn to more important institutions,
generally to the British Museum.
Considering the magnitude and importance of our National
Museum—the pride of British science—it seems amazing that
its existence goes no further back than some hundred and fifty
years. It was first opened to the public at Montague House, on
January 15th, 1759, only, however, for three hours a day ; and
indeed for long afterwards the admission was restricted by
complicated regulations, which were no doubt considered
necessary at the time but which seem to us, looking back from these
days of freedom, to have been of a most vexatious character.22
The original nucleus of the British museum, around which
the magnificent national collections have aggregated in the
course of a century and a half, was the private museum of Sir
Hans Sloane. Sloane—the intimate friend of Boyle and Ray,
and the immediate successor of Newton in the Presidential chair
of the Royal Society—had not only made a great collection him-
self, begun in early life during his sojourn in the West Indies,
but he succeeded in 1701 to the valuable collections of his friend
William Courteen. In 1684, Courteen, who had lived much on
the continent, opened a suite of rooms in the Temple, and there
arranged his collections, on which he had spent the greater part
of his fortune, and which he valued at £50,000. Yet the sum
paid by the nation in 1753 for the Sloane museum at Chelsea,
including Courteen's specimens, was but £20,000—a sum which,
according to a codicil to Sloane's will, was not a quarter of their
intrinsic value. The Act of Parliament which was passed for the
purchase of the Sloane collection and the Harleian manuscripts
was also directed to "providing one general repository for the
better reception and more convenient use for the said collection."
Such was the origin of the British museum. It is this repository
which has gradually expanded into the splendid institutions at
Bloomsbury and South Kensington.
22 Walter Harrison in his "History" gives the following description of the mode of
gaining admittance to the Museum :—
" If any number, not exceeding fifteen, are inclined to see it, they must send a list of their
christian and surnames, with their place of abode, to the porter's lodge, in order to their being
entered in the book ; in a few days the respective tickers will be made out, specifying the day
and hour when they are to come ; which, on being sent for, will be delivered. The fewer
names there are on the list, the sooner the company will gain admittance."