Introduction. ix 



finding accommodation for the ever-growing library; but the 

 keepers of other departments continued urgent in their demands 

 for more space, and after much discussion of rival plans for 

 keeping the collections together and obtaining the needful exten- 

 sion of room by acquiring the property immediately around the 

 old Museum, or for severing the collections and removing a 

 portion to another building, the latter course was finally decided 

 upon. At a special general meeting of the Trustees, held on 

 the 21st of January, 1860, attended by many members of the 

 Government in their official capacity, a resolution, moved by the 

 First Lord of the Treasury, was carried : " That it is expedient 

 that the Natural History Collection be removed from the British 

 Museum, inasmuch as such an arrangement would be attended 

 with considerably less expense than would be incurred by pro- 

 viding a sufficient additional space in immediate contiguity to the 

 present building of the British Museum." 



The House of Commons, in the Session of 1863, sanctioned 

 the purchase of part of the site of the International Exhibition 

 of 1862 at South Kensington, with a view to appropriating it to 

 the purpose of a Museum of Natural History. 



In January, 1864, the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works 

 issued an advertisement for designs for a Natural History 

 Museum and a Patent Museum, to be erected on part of the land 

 thus acquired, a plan which had been prepared by Mr. Hunt in 

 September, 1862, from Sir Richard Owen's suggestions, being 

 proposed as a model in respect to dimensions and internal 

 arrangement. 



The plans of the various competitors were submitted to Her 

 Majesty's Commissioners of Works, who awarded prizes to three 

 of the number, giving precedence to that of Captain Francis 

 Fowke, R.E., and then referred the three premiated plans to the 

 Trustees of the British Museum. As the internal arrangements 

 in Captain Fowke's plan did not meet with the approval of the 

 Museum officers, he was desired to modify them in conformity 

 with the requirements of the Trustees. He was engaged in this 

 labour when his death occurred, in September, 1865. 



Early in the year 1866, Mr. Alfred Waterbouse was invited by 



