To the Editor of the "Norru-Cama Dairy News."
S1r,—It is with considerable interest that I read in to-day's issue of the "N.-C.D.N." a plea for a new combined museum and library for Shanghai. I sincerely hope that the -jdea put forward by you will meet with instant and adequate support from the whole Shanghai community.
Shanghai is a very large city now, and the European and American population not only a very large one, but, taken on the average, a very wealthy one. Also it is what amoy be called a picked one, since practically everybody in the place has been selected from a large body of people in the home lands on account of his or her special know: ledge and ability. Taken as a whole, the Shanghai community could pass a very high educational test. It is all the more remarkable, then, to find so large a city so inadequately equipped in the way of libraries and museums; in fact it is little short of scandalous. Anybody arriving from America Europe must receive a_ terrible shock, when they discover how intellectually poverty-stricken Shanghai is.
Why has the town no art gallery? China is admittedly one of the art centres of the world. Why is there no public scientific and general reference library? The field for original research work in China is immense, yet it is practically impossible for any enthusiast to do such work, because there are nu reference works accessible to him. Why is there not a really good museum? Is the youth of Shanghai less in need of proper education than elsewhere I fully approve your suggestion that the Royal Asiatic Society and the Municipal Council might join hands in the venture, and devise ways and means of erecting a raully fine building in pleasant grounds in some nice and more or less central part of the town, where the valuable books possessed by both institutions could be properly housed, where the valuable—specimens in the R.A.S. Museum could form a nucleus for a really fine collection, where public lectures could be given in a commodious and well arranged hall, and which would be the contre and home of the intellectual life in Shanghai. There might be a children's library too, as suggested in your yesterday's leader, and special facilities might be given to teachers and college professors to make use of the museum and library in their educational work. Branch societies in biology, art, literature, might be formed, with the R.A.S. as the Mother Society. In short, the more eye contemplates the idea the great-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.