Note 16 — Chapter I

Mr. N. W. Thomas (Man, v, 1905, No. 25, pp. 47-8) points out that ‘some five years ago the Berlin collections [of ethnographical objects] from British possessions were seven times as large as those in our national museum, and since then this disproportion has not been decreased’, the reason being that ‘the men whom the nation pays to perform certain duties [in national expeditions] are permitted to retain the objects collected in the performance of those duties’. But the nation is to blame as much as the Government.