IX 



evenings, his last appearance there being on April 26, 1861, when 

 he delivered the discourse " On the Scope and Appliances of a 

 National Museum of Natural History," to be presently referred 

 to. In April, 1862, he gave four lectures on Birds at the London 

 Institution. 



While at the College of Surgeons he had been a member of a 

 Government Commission for enquiring into the health of the 

 Metropolis; and subsequently (in 1849) of one on Smithfield and 

 the other meat markets, in which he strongly advocated the entire 

 suppression of intramural slaughter-houses, and the concomitant 

 evil of the passage of droves of sheep and cattle through the streets 

 of London. For the Great Exhibition of 1851 he was on the Prelimi- 

 nary Committee of Organisation, and he acted as Chairman of the 

 Jury on raw materials, alimentary substances, &c., and published an 

 elaborate report on their awards. He also delivered to the Society 

 of Arts a lecture on " Raw Animal Products, and their Uses in 

 Manufacture." Similar services were performed by him for the 

 Exposition Universelle of Paris in 1858. 



It has been already said that Owen took scarcely any part in the 

 details of the administration of the British Museum, but one subject 

 relating to that establishment did largely engage his attention from 

 his first connexion with it. That the accommodation afforded by 

 the rooms devoted to natural history in the Museum at Bloomsbury 

 was painfully inadequate for the purpose was evident to him as well 

 as to everyone else. Space must be obtained somewhere, even for 

 the proper conservation and display of the existing collections, to say 

 nothing of the vast additions that must be expected if the subject 

 were to be represented in anything like the way in which it deserved 

 to be in his eyes, and Owen in this respect had very large views. 

 The scientific public, the officers of the Museum, and the Trustees 

 were much divided as to whether it would be better to endeavour to 

 obtain this space in the neighbourhood of the existing Museum, or to 

 remove a portion of the collection to a totally distinct locality. After 

 some apparent hesitation, Owen threw himself strongly on the side of 

 those who took the latter view, being the one which seemed to him to 

 have the best chance of leading to a successful result, and he strongly 

 urged npon the Government, and upon the public generally, in 

 annual Museum returns, lectures, and pamphlets, the desirability of 

 the scheme. In his address as President of the Biological Section of 

 the British Association at the York meeting in 1881, he has given a 

 history of the part he took in promoting the building of the new 

 museum at South Kensington, including his success in enlisting the 

 sympathy of Mr. Gladstone, by whose powerful aid the difficulties 

 and opposition with which the plan was met in Parliament were 

 mainly overcome. His earlier views upon the subject are fully 



