74 NATURAL SCIENCE birises 
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 déments. 
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 Zimes, 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 
