Museums Association

Abstract

II. THESE are the principles of what may be called the New Museum idea as applied to national museums of natural history. It is a remarkable coincidence that since they were first enunciated, and during the time of their discussion, but before they had met with anything like universal acceptance, the four first nations of Europe almost simultaneously erected in their respective capitals—London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin—entirely new buildings on a costly, even palatial scale, to receive the natural history collections, which in each case had quite outgrown their previous insufficient accommodation. In the construction of neither of these four edifices can the guardians of the public purse be accused of want of liberality. Each building is a monument in itself of the appreciation of the government of the country of the value and interest of the natural history sciences. So far this is most satisfactory. Now that each is more or less completed, at all events for the present, and its contents in a fair way towards a permanent arrangement, it may not be without interest on the present occasion to give some comparative account of their salient features, especially with a view to ascertain whether and to what extent their construction and arrangement have complied with the requirements of the modern idea of such institutions.