240 NOTES ON THE CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES.
In all local museums the main difficulty of the management is that there is
neither money nor work enough for a highly-trained and competent man. It is
in any case impossible to get a universal genius who can deal with every class of
object equally well, and hardly any local museum can afford to pay for a first-class
curator on any one subject. These difficulties are entirely the result of a want of
co-operation.
According to the report of the Committee in 1887, there are fifty-six 1st
class, fifty-five 2nd class, sixty-three 3rd class, and thirty 4th class museums in the
kingdom. Setting aside the last two classes as mostly too poor to pay except for
mere caretaking, there are 111 in the other classes ; and deducting a few of the
1st class museums as being fully provided, there are 100 museums, all of which
endeavour to keep up to the mark by spending perhaps £30 to £'200 a year on a
curator.
The practical course would seem to be their union, in providing a federal staff,
to circulate for all purposes requiring skilled knowledge, leaving the permanent
attention to each place to devolve on a mere caretaker. If half of these 1st and
2nd class museums combined in paying £30 a year each, there would be enough
to pay three first-rate men £500 a year apiece, and each museum would have a
week of attention in the year from a geologist, and the same from a zoologist and
an archaeologist.
The duties of such a staff would be to arrange and label the new specimens
acquired in the past year, taking sometimes a day, or perhaps a fortnight, at one
place ; to advise on alterations and improvements ; to recommend purchases
required to fill up gaps ; to note duplicates and promote exchanges between
museums ; and to deliver a lecture on the principal novelties of their own subject
in the past year. Such visitants, if well selected, would probably be welcome
guests at the houses of some of those interested, in the museum in each place.
The effect at the country museums would be that three times in the year a
visitant would arrive for one of the three sections, would work everything up-to-
date, stir the local interests by advice and a lecture, stimulate the caretaker, and
arrange routine work that could be carried out before the next year's visit, and
yet would not cost more than having down three lecturers for the local institution
or society, apart from this work.
To many, perhaps most, museums £30 for skilled work, and £30 or £40 for a
caretaker, would be an economy on their present expenditure, while they would
get far better attention. Such a system could not be suddenly started ; but if
there were an official base for it, curators could interchange work according to
their specialities, and as each museum post fell vacant it might be placed in
commission among the best curators in that district, until by gradual selection the
most competent men were attached to forty or fifty museums to be served in
rotation. It is not impossible that the highest class of the local museums might
be glad to subscribe, so as to get special attention on subjects outside of the studies
of their present curators.
The Chairman having invited discussion on Prof. Petrie's paper, Mr. W. E.
Hoyle approved of the plan described by Prof. Petrie, which he considered to be
a simple and practical one. He thought the great hindrance to carrying it out
would be found to be the almost incredible inertia of museum committees ; and in
the event of any persons present being entrusted with the execution of this
scheme, he would recommend them to confer with the officials of the Museums