I4O The Flower Memorial. ("ist'oct. 



The Flower Memorial. 



The following is abridged from The Times, 27th July, 1903 : — 



A bust of the late Sir William Henry Flower, F.R.S., Director of the 

 Natural History Department of the British Museum, was formally presented 

 to the Trustees of the British Museum by the blower Memorial Committee, 

 of which Lord Avebury is chairman, at the Natural History Museum, South 

 Kensington, on Saturday ; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the 

 representative of the Trustees, received and unveiled it. The ceremony 

 took place in the central hall of the Museum in the presence of a large 

 and distinguished gathering. 



Professor Ray Lankester, F.R.S., Director of the Natural History Depart- 

 ment, of the Museum, opened the proceedings with a few words, and intro- 

 duced Lord Avebury, the chairman of the Memorial Committee. 



Lord Avebury, in presenting the bust to the trustees and asking the 

 Archbishop to unveil it, expressed the respect and admiration which he 

 had always felt for the late Sir W. Flower, a naturalist of great eminence, 

 who had rendered magnificent service to the Museum. 



Dr. Sclater, F.R.S., speaking as an old and intimate friend of the late 

 Sir W. Flower, gave a brief sketch of his career. He pointed out that he 

 had held the office of president of the Zoological Society of London, and 

 stated that when the directorship of the Natural History Museum became 

 vacant in 1884, Sir W. Flower was selected omnium consensu as the fittest 

 man for that important post. Virchow, of Berlin, was said to have desig- 

 nated him as the " Prince of Museum Directors." The late Director had 

 filled three of the most exalted and conspicuous posts that a devotee of 

 zoological science could expect to occupy, and had made his mark in all 

 of them. 



The Archbishop of Canterbury (who presided) said it was as a principal 

 Trustee of the British Museum that he was allowed the privilege of accepting 

 on behalf of the Museum, and of unveiling, a memorial to one of the very 

 best officers who in its long history had ever served it. But it was as a 

 close personal friend of the remarkable man whose bust he unveiled that 

 lie rejoiced specially in being fortunate enough to be the official recipient. 

 After a tribute to Sir W. Flower's personal qualities, the Archbishop 

 stated that, in 1889, as President of the British Association, Professor 

 Flower, as he then was, delivered an address, taking for his subject 

 " Museums ; " and in that address there were two or three passages 

 which expressed so strikingly what his ideals were that he could not 

 refrain from quoting them. He said : — 



" What a museum really depends upon for its success and usefulness is 

 not its buildings, not its cases, not even its specimens, but its curator. He 

 and his staff are the life and soul of the institution, upon whom its whole 

 value depends. ... A museum is like a fixing organism — it requires 

 continual and tender care. It must grow, or it will perish ; and the cost 

 and labour required to maintain it in a state of vitality is not yet by any 

 means fully realized or provided for, either in our great national establish- 

 ments or in our smaller local institutions A. museum has been 



defined as a collection of instructive labels illustrated by well-selected 

 specimens." 



It seemed to him that no man among the scientific men that he had 

 known had done so much as he to popularize in that particular way for 

 uninstructed people, like himself, in scientific subjects the vast mass of 

 material which was collected in buildings such as that, and to make avail- 

 able lor the nation's good that which was the nation's property to start with. 



