10
One important matter should be stated here. It relates to
the conditions of acceptance of donations, which have been
adopted from the beginning of the Club's collecting ; the stipula-
tions are these : —
" Conditions as to acceptance of Donations to the Essex Field Club
Museums.—The Council and Curator will take every possible care of
accepted specimens and collections, and will make due acknow-
ledgment of the kindness of the donors, but they reserve to themselves
the power of exhibiting or storing them in cabinets or otherwise, in ways
most useful for the purposes of the Museum ; to place them in any
branch Museum belonging to the Club ; and to exhibit them on loan in
any part of the County of Essex. They also reserve right to remount
or re-arrange the specimens or collections; to incorporate them with
other collections, and to dispose of duplicates by exchange or otherwise
as may be thought best in the interests of the institution considered
as a Local and Educational Museum."
Experience proves the necessity of such liberty being given
to the Council and Curator, if they are to be responsible for the
scientific character of the collections, and avoid the errors and
pitfalls so commonly observed in the curating of many local
Museums. And it is of the greatest importance that these rules
should be clearly and firmly laid down, now that the Club is
receiving the co-operation of public bodies in amassing and
arranging large local collections.
PRACTICAL METHODS OF WORK IN THE MUSEUM
The objects of the Museum are clearly set forth on page 6
of this pamphlet. They may be briefly summarised thus:—
(1) Educational.
(2) The conservation of authentic sets of local species
and specimens.
(3) The encouragement of local observation and
research.
The possibility of fulfilling these three purposes in one small
museum was considered by the present writer in a paper read at
the South-East Union of Natural History Societies in 1898,
under the title of " The Objects and Methods of a Local Museum,"
and as these methods are intended to be eventually carried out in
the Essex Museum (when funds and space will permit), it may
be well to make some extracts from that paper :—
" I think that these three objects may be combined in a Museum,
even when limited to the illustration of a small district, to the manifest