British Museum 2043—Curiosities of Ancient Times.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM TWO HUNDRED
YEARS HENCE.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science, which began its meetings at Bristol, has since been strongly recommended to go to Bath; and if it is not sent permanently to Coventry before the year 2043, we may conceive its having reached by that time a state of stagnancy in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury. As there will, of course, be antiquarians among them, imagination can easily picture them clinging fondly to St. Giles's, as the quarter inhabited by the Anglo-Greeks; and the members will, no doubt, be searching, a hundred years hence, for the fossil remains of petrified crows in the neighbourhood of the Rookery.
The following is an anticipatory report of the meeting of the Association, after having been cradled in the laps of time during the lapse of a couple of centuries.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE, APRIL 1, 2043.
Your Committee have the satisfaction to state that, their funds being thoroughly exhausted, they have been enabled to save the usual expense of travelling, and have taken advantage of the liberality of the Government for the purpose of visiting the British Museum. Your Committee remained some time at the outer gate, for the purpose of making some observations on two boxes, which it is understood have been there for sentries; but, as they have not discovered what a sentry is, your Committee conclude that the word must be a corruption of centuries.
On going through the court-yard the Association made some experiments upon the atmosphere, with the view of calculating the difference (by means of the differential calculus) between the air inside the gates and that which circulates on the outside; but your Committee are unable to state any satisfactory result to their arduous experiment.
On entering the hall of the Museum your Committee have to complain of being deprived of their walking-sticks; but this annoyance was in some degree compensated by their receiving in exchange some very curious pieces of tin, which are, no doubt, of very ancient origin. They were at once referred to the chairman of the mineralogical section, who pronounced them to be the coin generally in use in the nineteenth century, for the word tin is frequently met with, in old books, where money is clearly the article alluded to.
Upon reaching the great room your Committee were met by an officer of the Museum, who conducted them over the building, and pointed out to your Committee the chief objects of interest.
The Association had the satisfaction of looking at a very ancient machine, called the stocks, which served the double purpose of punishing offenders and regulating the money market. The chairman of your Committee was appointed to sit on the stocks, and did so for a considerable time, in the course of which he fully ascertained how they might have been available for punishment, but he is still at a loss to discover the monetary uses which our ancestors evidently put them to. It must be regarded as one of the lost arts, like chuck-farthing, and other mysteries, which are now only left to us in the pages of history.