Abstract
OUR notice of the condition of the South African Museum, and the various sums allotted to research by the Government of the Colony, has called forth some criticisms on the part of the Cape-town Standard and Mail of April 7. “What NATURE and other scientific organs in Europe mean by ‘research,’” it states, “is not what the responsible advisers of the Cape mean by their favouring grants. It would not be saying too much, nor putting it too strongly, to assert that there is no scientific research carried on in connection with any botanical gardens in South Africa. In regard to our museums there is some genuine work being done; at all events in the South African and Albany museums original observations are being recorded. As to our libraries which absorb 2,000l. per annum of the public money, the less said, perhaps, the better. The South African Library, as far as standard works in such branches of science as anatomy, chemistry, mineralogy, natural philosophy, &c., are concerned, is simply deficient, and unaccountably so, considering the demands of these departments and the standing of some of the directors. The only sums voted for purely original scientific work are those for ‘Geological Researches,’ for the publication of Dr. Bleek's Bushman Researches, and for the Meteorological Commission. With the exception of the first of these, which amounts to 1,500l., research in the sense NATURE must mean, is fostered by only some four or five hundred pounds.” The writer then goes on to describe the consequences of Dr. Bleek's death; the linguistic and ethnological researches he was carrying on have been stopped, and instead of appointing a qualified scholar to fill his place, the Government allowed his office and salary “to be absorbed into the general and ignoble management of the South African Library, which is only a representative of Mudie, being conducted in the charitable idea of providing, at three pounds sterling per annum, the current literature of the day to subscribers who for the same reading would have to pay in a circulating library about four times the amount . . . ‘Novels are the solace of my life,’ was the plea (of Mr. Goodliffe) from the chair in favour of continuing a national institution subsidised by the Government of the Colony, and therefore supported from the revenue of the country, as a receptacle for the custodianship of the popular writings of the period. The scientific. work of South Africa has been done by amateurs holding no professed natural history appointments.” The Gill College Herbarium now receives a subsidy of l00l. a year, but “Prof. Macowan worked at the botany of the Colony for thirteen years before he received any grant to enable him to prosecute the study, or to cover the expenses of preserving a large herbarium.” The Colonial Herbarium in Capetown “has a collection of types of the very highest value to Cape botany” those arranged and classified by Dr. Harvey. It has the collections of Dr. Pappe, the late Colonial botanist, consisting of thousands of species, which were bought by a former Government for some 200l. Other collections more or less valuable are also in the Herbarium.” But “the greater part of these interesting and valuable plants has been destroyed by rain leaking through the roof of the library buildings into the room where they are kept, and by the ravages of moths, &c. In a short time the herbarium will be simply nothing but a mass of uninteresting fragments. We understand that some time back the Parliament voted a small sum to be expended in putting the herbarium into order. How far anything could possibly have been done by those in charge may be learned from the fact that Dr. Rehman, the Austrian botanist, found whole fasiculi destroyed.”
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The South African Museum . Nature 16, 47–48 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016047a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016047a0