68 LIFE OF FLOWER 



of their extinct relatives, and even the fossilised bones 

 and teeth of the living species, were relegated to 

 the Geological Department, which occupies the ground- 

 floor of the opposite side of the building. To make 

 matters worse, the skeletons of living mammals were 

 exhibited on the second floor of the zoological side of 

 the building (instead of, as they should have been, 

 on the ground floor), and thus as far away as they 

 could possibly be from those of their extinct predecessors. 



Such an unnatural and illogical sundering of 

 kindred objects was altogether repugnant to the mind 

 of Flower, who in his address to the British Association 

 in 1889, to which allusion has been already made, 

 expressed himself as follows : 



" For the perpetuation of the unfortunate separation 

 of palaeontology from biology, which is so clearly a 

 survival of an ancient condition of scientific culture, and 

 for the maintenance in its integrity of the heterogeneous 

 compound of sciences which we now call ' geology,' the 

 faulty organisation of our museums is in a great measure 

 responsible. The more their rearrangement can be made 

 to overstep and break down the abrupt line of demarca- 

 tion which is still almost universally drawn between 

 beings which live now and those which have lived in 

 past times, so deeply rooted in the popular mind, and so 

 hard to eradicate even from that of the scientific student, 

 the better it will be for the progress of sound biological 

 knowledge." 



The force of circumstances, coupled with the expense 

 which would have been involved, was, however, too 

 much for even a man with Flower's force of character 

 and determination, and the attempt to merge the 



