Abstract
AT first sight it does not strike one as a particularly edifying spectacle to see an appeal for funds made by a department of an ancient university, but after all it is a hopeful sign, as it indicates normal expansion or growth along new lines. It is a common mistake to regard the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well endowed; the wealth, such as it is—or rather such as it was—belongs to the colleges and not to the university, and as these universities are not endowed with public funds, they have to rely solely upon ancient and recent benefactions in addition to fees received from students. Consequently, when old subjects expand rapidly, or new subjects arise, there are insufficient funds to meet their needs; especially is this the case for scientific subjects, as, in addition to the lecturers, class-rooms, and books of the older subjects, these require demonstrators, laboratories, apparatus, and specimens. Museums, which are a necessity to many branches of science, are expensive institutions to erect, maintain, and increase. They are a relatively new feature in university education, and, though they are at present regarded by some with suspicion and by more with dismay, they are essential alike to teaching and research, and it is safe to predict that their value will become increasingly recognised. The chief reasons why museums are so generally misunderstood are because they are too small or too badly constructed to display their contents; they are understaffed and starved in funds for cases and additions, and, finally, they are not properly arranged. The last count is very largely dependent upon the previous conditions, for only those who have had experience can fully realise the impossibility of orderly and educative installation when every department of the museum is overcrowded and new specimens or collections are continually coming in. It is usually extremely difficult for a curator to keep pace with the new material in addition to the ordinary routine work of a museum, and as scarcely any museum has anything like an adequate staff, it is inevitable that something must be left undone. It is certainly the first duty of a curator to take care of his specimens, and thus it naturally happens that what is left to a more convenient season is the educational arrangement and descriptive labelling of the specimens; as it is these deficiencies that cause museums to be condemned as uninteresting or uninstructive, so it is difficult to get out of that vicious circle which is so well described by the proverb, “the destruction of the poor is their poverty.”
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The Needs of Anthropology at Cambridge . Nature 70, 366–367 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070366d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070366d0