74 NATURAL SCIENCE [August 



nection. Sir William's retirement, we may remind our readers, 

 creates two vacancies, namely, the Directorship of the Natural 

 History Section of the British Museum, and the Keepership of the 

 Zoological Department, the duties of the latter post having been 

 taken over by Sir William on the retirement of Dr Giinther. For 

 the present Dr Henry Woodward is acting as Deputy-director, 

 while the work of the Zoological Department is presumably in the 

 hands of the Assistant-keepers. Yet a third question suggested 

 itself to many, owing to the adoption by the Principal Librarian, 

 under a recent Treasury scheme, of the title Director. This was 

 supposed to show that the Trustees wished to bring the whole of the 

 British Museum more immediately under one head than had been 

 the case since the removal of the natural history collections from 

 Bloomsbury. These fears were confirmed by a prompt official (Umcnti. 

 Against any action that might lessen the independence of the 

 Natural History Museum an energetic protest was soon raised, 

 and a memorial signed by many leading men in various branches 

 of science, and by others, was stated by the public press to have 

 been addressed to the Trustees. The memorialists considered that the 

 principal official in charge of the natural history collections should 

 not be subordinate to any other officer of the Museum ; he should 

 meet the Trustees and represent them before Her Majesty's Treasury 

 as the responsible head of a department and not as a subordinate. 

 It is clear, the memorialists pointed out, and their contention was 

 emphasised by a leading article in the Times, that the interests 

 of the Departments at Bloomsbury are totally different from those 

 of the Natural History Museum, and that the special knowledge 

 and sympathies and individual museum experience that fit a man 

 for the post of Principal Librarian militate against his caring 

 adequately for the wants of natural history. The Times further 

 observed that the proposed action would deprive naturalists of one 

 of those very few posts " to which they might reasonably look 

 forward as a reward for study and research ; and we all know 

 that . . . the prospect of reward may serve to keep an able man 

 steadfast to a pursuit which he might otherwise be tempted to 

 forsake for some other and more promising mode of activity." The 

 inducements to enter the service of the Natural History Museum 

 are, it has been stated, none too high from a pecuniary point of 

 view, and the suggestion appears to be that the Trustees are far 

 more likely to obtain a good class of assistants in future if they 

 let it be seen that the highest posts are not excluded from those who 

 have gained knowledge and experience in a long and devoted service. 

 Other opinions of interest and originality were elicited by the 

 newspaper discussion : such as, that a botanist is not a naturalist, 

 that Mr Du Cane Godman is merely a collector of insects, that a 



