VIEW OF THE CENTRAL HALL, LOOKING NORTH: APRIL, 1913.
GENERAL GUIDE
TO
THE BRITISH MUSEUM
(NATURAL HISTORY).
HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Foundation.
The British Museum dates its foundation from the year 1753, when an Act of Parliament was passed “for the purchase of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing One General Repository for the better Reception and more convenient Use of the said Collections and of the Cottonian Library and of the Additions thereto.”
Sir Hans Sloane.
Sir Hans Sloane, an eminent physician in London, was for sixteen years President of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1727 succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in the Presidential Chair of the Royal Society. He was throughout his long life a diligent and miscellaneous collector, having, as stated in the Preamble of the Act of Incorporation of the Museum, “through the course of many years, with great labour and expense, gathered together whatever could be procured, either in our own or foreign countries, that was rare and curious.” His collection, which at the time of his death in 1753 was contained in his residence, the Manor House, Chelsea, consisted of “Books, Manuscripts, Prints, Medals, and Coins, ancient and modern, Seals, Cameos and Intaglios, Precious Stones, Agates, Jaspers, Vessels of Agate and Jasper, Crystals, Mathematical Instruments, Drawings, and Pictures,” and included numerous zoological and geological specimens, as well as an extensive herbarium of dried plants preserved in 333 large folio volumes.