Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/488

482 strictest sense for private use. In Japan, as elsewhere in Asia prior to the invasion of European methods, there was not, I l believe, a single public museum, unless indeed we regard as museums the storehouses of temples. These, however, contained little more than the reserve stock from which obects for temple service or decoration were chosen.

The earliest Asiatic museum appears to have been established in the Moluccas, about half a century after their definite settlement by the Dutch, and in the classic work-of Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, written at the close of the seventeenth century, we have a record of the number and variety of objects which had been gathered together by this enterprising collector in the room of curiosities in Amboyna (Amboinsche Eariteitkamer). It is evident that this collection was well represented in mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms. It contained a number of minerals and a small collection of fossils, the latter representing many groups. The descriptive catalogue of Eumphius, it may be mentioned, is well known to naturalists as containing the first account of the soft parts of the chambered nautilus, accompanied, too. by a figure which for a century and a half proved the most accurate in existence. Few details appear as to the organization of this pioneer Asiatic museum. Its founder was a well-to-do merchant in Amboyna. and it was probably installed in one of his warehouses. As far as I am aware, there is no proof that it was formally opened, in the sense of a modern museum, but by analogy of contemporary collections it is probable that the curiosity room of Amboyna was as freely open to visitors as the similar collections in London, Dresden or Paris.

In India the modern public museum found its definite foothold at the time of the extension of British rule. At the end of the eighteenth century, there were already active collectors among the officials of the East India Company, but in general the material then collected, whether ethnological, plant or animal, found its way into Europe. In the work of Linnaeus, for example, we find record of many Indian species which had been sent him by European collectors. It was by such early workers in various Indian cities that societies were formed which became of considerable importance toward the middle of the nineteenth century. And it is to these local societies that the origin of many of the recent museums is due.

In the present paper it is not my plan to refer even in outline to all museums of Asia. Those of Japan are so important that they might conveniently be reserved for a separate paper. The Dutch museums, moreover, I have not had an opportunity of visiting, nor yet those on the continent in the Malayan states. When in Calcutta, I

Amsterdam, François Halma, 1705. Part of the collection, as Mr. C. Davies Sherborn has kindly ascertained for me, was later sent to Europe and sold, 1682, to Cosmo de Medici III. It was subsequently transferred to Austria as part of the Medicean inheritance.