n our country towns, the prime duty of the great
London museum is to preserve "records" with the greatest nicety and
readiness for reference, whilst the duty of actively adding to these
records from all parts of the Empire, and, therefore, of the world,
and that of minutely studying and reporting upon the collections so
obtained and guarded, follow as a matter of course. These collections
are the absolutely necessary foundation for the building-up of our
knowledge of Nature and of man. We can never say that this branch of
scientific knowledge is valuable and that another is a mere fanciful
pursuit. Every year it becomes more and more clear that unexpectedly
some apparently insignificant piece of detailed scientific knowledge
may become of value to the State and to humanity at large. Everyone
knows that geology has a great practical value in mining, water
supply, and various kinds of engineering, also that botany, as
represented by the great State institution at Kew, is of immense
value to those who introduce useful plants from one part of the
world for cultivation in another. But of late we have seen that
entomology--"bug-hunting" as it is scornfully termed--is a science
upon which hang not only the revenue of an Empire, but also the lives
of millions of men. Destructive insects must be known with the utmost
accuracy in order to stop their injury to crops in the distant lands
which they inhabit, and also in order to check the diseases carried by
them which sweep off vast herds of costly cattle. The mosquitoes and
the tsetze flies have been, only recently, proved to be the causes,
the carriers, of diseases--malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping
sickness--which annually have killed hundreds of thousands of men,
colonists as well as natives. I was able to bring together at the
Natural History Museum collections of mosquitoes from every part of
the world, amounting to thousands of specimens and to some hundreds of
kinds. The study of these and of the tsetze flies by skilled
entomologists employed in the museum has been a necessary part of the
steps now being taken everywhere to preserve human population from
the attacks of certain deadly kinds among them, distinguished from
the others which are harmless.

Thus, then, it seems that the first and most important purpose for
which great "museums" exist is that of "the making of new
knowledge"--the increase of science--by furnishing carefully gathered
and preserved "specimens" of