LIFE OF FLOWER 173 



he deserves to be considered as an originator and inventor 

 in museum work. His methods have not only met 

 with general approval, and their application with 

 admiration, but they have been largely adapted and 

 copied by other Curators and Directors of public 

 museums both at home and abroad." 



Much has been said with regard to Flower's views on 

 museum arrangement in the chapter devoted to his 

 official connection with the British Museum. It may, 

 however, be permissible to repeat that in his epoch- 

 making address on museum organisation, delivered 

 before the British Association in 1889, he insisted, 

 in the case of large central public museums, on the 

 absolute necessity of separating the study from the 

 exhibition series ; and likewise on the limited number 

 and careful selection of the specimens which should 

 be shown to the public in the latter, and the prime 

 importance of carefully-written and simply-worded 

 descriptive labels for each group of specimens, if not, 

 indeed, for each individual specimen. His idea was, in 

 fact, that the specimens should illustrate the labels 

 rather than the labels the specimens. A limited 

 number, rather than an extensive series, of exhibited 

 specimens, and ample room for each, were also features 

 in his progress of reform. Not less emphatic was 

 Sir William on the importance of combining the 

 extinct with the living forms in our museums ; but 

 this, as stated elsewhere, he was unable to carry out in 

 the national collection. 



It was, however, by no means only in our great 

 national museums that Flower took so much interest, 

 and advocated (and to a great extent succeeded in 



