WHAT a very unexpected statement you publish from the Castle Museum's director of collections (May 28).

Referring to the "mystery barrow " found in the River Ouse, she reportedly states: "we don't know anything about it so it wouldn't be something we would be looking to collect".

Surely, if the great museums had worked to this principle for the last 200 years, the world's fabulous collections of Egyptology, palaeontology, and just about every other 'ology would not exist!

True museums have been the driving force behind these collections since the time of the great Victorian explorers.

Malcolm Smethurst,

Welton Avenue,York.

Updated: 09:39 Tuesday, May 31, 2005