Page:Notes on the Present and Future of the Archaeological Collections of the University of Oxford.djvu/15

 takes place it is intended that they should remain there until the Greek Calends, or the completion of the Indian Institute. It seems a pity that it did not fall to the lot of this learned Professor to solve the question of finding additional space for the Natural History Collections of the British Museum. He would simply have stuffed the Brahmin Bulls, Gorillas, and Sharks into the Elgin Gallery, and the Seaweeds into the Medal Room, and then the Nation would have been saved the expense of erecting a new Natural History Museum at South Kensington.

Before quitting the subject of the Ashmolean Museum allusion must be made to the recent discovery that for years a number of valuable articles in silver, amber, agate, and other precious materials from the old Tradescant Collection, and enumerated in the quaint and valuable old Tradescant Catalogue, together with a portion of the Saxon-English collection figured in the Nenia Brittanica, had been packed away in a box in an outhouse in the basement, to which access by a ladder might easily have been had from the street. This circumstance has been the subject of a painful correspondence between the present learned Keeper of the Ashmolean, J. H, Parker, Esq., Hon. M.A. and C.B., and the ex-Assistant-Keeper, who admits that the objects in question were "turned out" of the Museum, but he alleges that this was done under the direction of the late keeper, Dr. Duncan, who is no longer alive to defend himself from such a preposterous charge. This serious and disgraceful matter is only alluded to here in order that members of the University may note the spoliation to which, under the existing machinery, they are liable to be exposed. The possibility, even, of such an outrageous occurrence