in the language of the present day, is a building in which are deposited specimens of every object that is in any degree curious, whether such objects be natural or artificial. What the word museum expressed originally, has been told under that title in the Encyclopaedia.

A complete museum contains collections of preserved beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, &c.; models of machines; rare manuscripts; and indeed specimens of everything necessary to illustrate physical science, to improve art, to aid the antiquarian in his researches, and to exhibit the manners and customs of men in distant ages and nations. As natural objects of uncommon size or beauty, and other rare productions, were, in the earliest periods, consecrated to the gods, the temples were, of course, the first repositories of such collections, or, in other words, the first Museums. This, we think, has been completely proved by Professor Beckmann.

"When Hamo (says he) returned from his distant voyages, he brought with him to Carthage two skins of hairy women whom he found on the Gorgades islands, and deposited them as a memorial in the temple of Juno, where they continued till the destruction of the city. The horns of a Scythian animal, in which the Stygian water that destroyed every other vessel could be contained, were sent by Alexander as a curiosity to the temple of Delphi, where they were suspended, with an inscription, which has been preserved by Ælian. The monstrous horns of the wild bulls which had occasioned so much devastation in Macedonia, were, by order of King Philip, hung up in the temple of Hercules. The unnaturally formed shoulder bones of Pelops were deposited in the temple of Elis. The horns of the so-called Indian ants were shown in the temple of Hercules at Erythrea; and the crocodile found in attempting to discover the sources of the Nile was preserved in the temple of Isis at Caesarea. A large piece of the root of the cinnamon tree was kept in a golden vessel in one of the temples at Rome, where it was examined by Pliny. The skin of that monster which the Roman army in Africa attacked and destroyed, and which probably was a crocodile, an animal common in that country, but never seen by the Romans before the Punic war, was, by Regulus, sent to Rome, and hung up in one of the temples, where it remained till the time of the Numantine war (a). In the temple of Juno, in the island of Malta, there were a pair of elephants' teeth of extraordinary size, which were carried away by Mafinisa's admiral, and transmitted to that prince, who, though he set a high value upon them, sent them again back, because he heard they had been taken from a temple. The head of a basilisk was exhibited in one of the temples of Diana; and the bones of that sea monster, probably a whale, to which Andromeda was exposed, were preserved at Joppa, and afterwards brought to Rome.

(a) We think, with the translator of Beckmann's History, that this animal was not the crocodile, but the Boa constrictor. See Boa and Serpent, Encycl. In the time of Panianus, the head of the celebrated Calydonian boar was shewn in one of the temples of Greece; but it was then deftite of brittle, and had suffered considerably by the hand of time. The monstrous tusks of this animal were brought to Rome, after the defeat of Anthony, by the Emperor Augustus, who caused them to be suspended in the temple of Bacchus. Apollonius tells us, that he saw in India some of those nuts which in Greece were preserved in the temples as curiosities.

Though these curiosities were preserved in the temples for purposes very different from those for which our collections are made, there can be no doubt but that they contributed to promote the knowledge of natural history. If it be true, as Pliny and Strabo inform us, that Hippocrates availed himself of the accounts which were hung up in the temple of Asclepius of different diseases, and of the medicines and mode of treatment by which they were cured; it will easily be believed, that the natural historians availed themselves, in a similar manner, of the various rare objects which were preserved in the temples of the other gods. This, we see, Pliny actually did.

Suetonius informs us, that Augustus had, in his palace, a collection of natural curiosities; and it is well known that Alexander gave orders to all huntmen, bird-catchers, fishermen, and others, to send to Aristotle whatever rare animals they could procure. M. Beckmann seems to be of opinion, that the first private museum was formed by Apuleius, who, next to Aristotle and his scholar Theophrastus, certainly examined natural objects with the greatest ardour and judgment; who caused animals of every kind, and particularly fish, to be brought to him either dead or alive, in order to describe their external and internal parts, their number and situation, and to determine their characteristic marks, and establish their real names; who undertook distant journeys to become acquainted with the secrets of nature; and who, on the Getulian mountains, collected petrefactions, which he considered as the effects of Denialion's flood.

The principal cause why collections of natural curiosities were scarce in ancient times, must have been the ignorance of naturalists in regard to the proper means of preserving such bodies as soon spoil or corrupt. Some methods were indeed known and practised, but they were all defective and inferior to that by spirit of wine, which prevents putrefaction, and which, by its perfect transparency, permits the objects which are covered by it to be at all times viewed and examined. These methods were the same as those employed to preserve provisions, or the bodies of great men deceased. They were put into salt brine or honey, or were covered over with wax. Thus the hippopotamus, described by Columus, was sent to him from Egypt preserved in salt. The body of Agelipolis King of Sparta, who died in Macedonia, was sent home in honey; the celebrated purple dye of the ancients was preserved fifth for many years by the same means; and at this day, when the Orientals are desirous of transporting fish to any distance, they cover them over with wax.

In those centuries which are usually called the middle ages, the Professor finds no traces of what can be called a museum, except in the treasuries of emperors, kings, and princes, where, besides articles of great value, curiosities of art, antiquities, and relics, one sometimes found scarce and singular foreign animals, which were dried and preserved. Such objects were to be seen in the old treasury at Vienna; and in that of St Denis was exhibited the claw of a griffin, sent by a king of Persia to Charlemagne; the teeth of the hippopotamus, and other things of the like kind. In these collections, the number of the rarities always increased in proportion as a taste for natural history became more prevalent, and as the extension of commerce afforded better opportunities for procuring the productions of remote countries. Menageries were established to add to the magnificence of courts, and the stuffed skins of rare animals were hung up as memorials of their having existed. Public libraries also were made receptacles for such natural curiosities as were from time to time presented to them; and as in universities the faculty of medicine had a hall appropriated for the dissection of human bodies, curiosities from the animal kingdom were collected there also by degrees; and it is probable that the professors of anatomy first made attempts to preserve different parts of animals in spirit of wine, as they were obliged to keep them by them for the use of their scholars; and because in old times dead bodies were not given up to them as at present, and were more difficult to be obtained. Private collections appear for the first time in the 16th century; and there is no doubt (says our author) that they were formed by every learned man who at that period applied to the study of natural history.