THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM 73 



work for ladies to do, and Frank Buckland's 

 suggestion seems quite as valuable at present as 

 it was then. 



Enough has been said to show that Flower was 

 essentially a reformer in matters connected with 

 museums. Mr. J. W. Clark, Registrary of the 

 University of Cambridge, says : 



Of all the changes which Flower introduced in the 

 Hunterian Museum none was so startling, and none, it may 

 be added, more admirable, than his abolition of the line of 

 demarcation hitherto drawn between recent and extinct forms. 

 Professor Owen had advocated this course in a report ad- 

 dressed to the Museum Committee, dated 2ist December 1841, 

 and the Committee had accepted his views in a resolution 

 dated loth February 1842, but for various reasons the change 

 had been deferred. In 1883, however, Flower was able to 

 announce that the old series of " fossils " had been broken 

 up, each specimen placed among its allies, according to its 

 zoological affinities, and recorded in its new position in the 

 catalogue then in progress. Prejudice dies hard, and strati- 

 graphical considerations have still so strong an influence, that 

 this is probably the only museum in which so enlightened an 

 arrangement has been adopted. Here, however, he who runs 

 may read the important truth that there has been no break in the 

 continuity of life upon the earth. 



