Not very much myself, but one of the staff there, Thomas de Wit, is doing
our mid-career MA in Museum & Gallery Management at the moment and
certainly could tell you.  It is one of the rich and varied smaller
donor-memorial museums of rich and curious persons that you find in many
places in the UK - other London examples include the Horniman Museum
founded on the profits of the tea trade and the Wellcome medical
collections (pharmaceuticals).

Tom has an email address through the University here: [log in to unmask]
but as it is the vacation and he is in any case part-time it could be some
time before he is in to check for mail, so you would be  better faxing him
at the Museum: +44-171-703.7415.

I am sure that the Museum would be very glad indeed to hear of the
marine taxa named after their founder!

Patrick J. Boylan
(Professor of Arts Policy and Management)

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887; e-mail: [log in to unmask]
World Wide Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/

================================================================

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Geoff Read wrote:

> Subject: Cuming Museum in London
>
> As a biologist I have recently come across a number of marine species
> named after Cuming. Can anyone tell me more about the history of this
> Museum?
>
> --
>    Geoff Read <[log in to unmask]> (my real e-mail address)
>