Life of Flower 



CHAPTER I 



BORN on 3oth November 1831 at his father's house, 

 " The Hill," Stratford-on-Avon, William Henry Flower 

 was a man who had the rare good fortune not only to 

 make a profession of the pursuit he loved best, but 

 likewise to attain the highest possible success in, and 

 to be appointed to the most important and influential 

 post connected with that profession. As he tells us in 

 that delightful book, Essays on Museums, he was pleased 

 to designate as a " museum " when a boy at home a 

 miscellaneous collection of natural history objects, kept 

 at first in a cardboard box, but subsequently housed in 

 a cupboard. And as a man he became the respected 

 head of the greatest Natural History Museum in the 

 British Empire, if not indeed in the whole world. Very 

 significant of his future attention to details and of the 

 importance he attached to recording the history of 

 every specimen received in a museum, is the fact that 

 he compiled a carefully drawn-up catalogue of his first 

 boyish collection. 



This early and persistent taste for natural history was 

 not, as we learn from the same collection of essays, in- 

 herited from any member of either his father's 'or his 

 A 



