BRITISH MUSEUM.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1389, 15 March 1912, Page 5

BRITISH MUSEUM.

9 • SIR A. GEIICIE TRACES ITS HISTORY, Sir Archibald Geikie, the president of the Royal Society, in opening the new lecture hall and rending room which hav» been presented to the Horniman Museum' by Mr. Eirislie .T. Horniman, said that some 'two hundred years ago there were a. great many collections, but they wero in tho hands of private individuals, and these men.ransacked the country and muds collections, some of the most extraordinary kind, some containing exceedingly valuable objects, but many—perhaps most of them—containing a g/eat deal of rubbish. About the beginning and towards iho middle of the seventeenth century ths effect of Francis Bacon's works began to be seen, and there grew up a remarkabla group of men, very distinguished in science, but modest and quiet, and in those very troublous times of the Civil War they retired for purposes of study, and laid tho'foundations of physical aiicf biological science in this country. Soma of them were collectors, and us* soon as they formed themselves, as they eventually did, into tho Royal Society,' they gav'o themselves no end of trouble in collecting specimens of national history and objects of scientific ink-rest, anil the.-o they put into the building which (hey, called their repository. By and by the Royal Society, finding that all collections wero being ranged under the aegis of tho Government, gava up its own repository and its cmitent.s, and tho whole formed tho British Museum. That was really the origin o tho greatest museum of science, national history, archaeology, and literature which existed in tho world.