58 LIFE OF FLOWER 



four sections, or departments, namely Zoology, Geology 

 (or rather Palaeontology), Botany and Mineralogy, each 

 of which was presided over by a " Keeper," who had 

 practically unlimited control, both as regards finance and 

 general arrangement, of his own section. Consequently, 

 as regards these four departments, the Director had very 

 little control over the museum he was nominally sup- 

 posed to govern; and his functions were to a great 

 extent limited to regulating the t( foreign policy " of the 

 institution under his charge, that is to say, its relations 

 to the parent establishment at Bloomsbury, to the 

 Treasury, and to the world at large. In fact, as Sir 

 William once remarked to the present writer, the 

 Director at that time had to find a sphere of work 

 for himself. 



Fortunately, such a sphere of work lay ready to hand, 

 and Flower immediately entered upon it with character- 

 istic energy and enthusiasm. 



So long ago as the year 1859, Sir Richard Owen, in 

 one of his reports to the Trustees of the Museum, 

 recommended that the new building, in addition to 

 affording ample space for the general series of natural 

 specimens exhibited to the public, should likewise 

 include a hall, or other suitable apartment, for the 

 display of a series of specimens calculated to convey 

 an elementary idea of the general principles of systematic 

 natural history and biological classification to the large 

 proportion of the ordinary public visitor not conversant 

 with that subject. In other words, the feature of the 

 proposed section would be the exhibition of a series of 

 specimens selected to show the more typical characters 

 of the principal groups of organised (and, it was at the 



