XI 



as practical, to be overruled . As long ago as December, 1841, he sub- 

 mitted to the Museum Comiuittee of the Royal College of Surgeons 

 the question of incorporating in one catalogue and system of arrange- 

 ment the fossil bones of extinct animals with the specimens of recent 

 osteology, and shortly afterwards laid before the Committee a report 

 pointing out the advantages of such a plan. Strangely enough, 

 though receiving the formal approval of the Council, no steps were 

 taken to carry it out as long as he was at the College. He returned 

 to the question in reference to the arrangement of the new National 

 Museum, and although no longer advocating so complete an incor- 

 poration of the two series, apparently in consideration of the interests 

 of the division into "departments" which he found in existence 

 there, he says " The Department of Zoology in such a museum should 

 be so located as to afford the easiest transit from the specimens of 

 existing to those of extinct animals. The geologist specially devoted 

 to the study of the evidence of extinct vegetation ought, in like 

 manner, to have means of comparing his fossils with the collections 

 of recent plants."* Provision for such an arrangement is clearly 

 indicated in all the early plans for the building in which the space for 

 the different subjects is allocated, but not a trace of it remained in 

 the final disposition of the contents of the Museum, as Owen left it in 

 1883. 



Another essential feature of Owen's original plan, without which, 

 he says, " No collection of zoology can be regarded as complete," is a 

 gallery of physical ethnology, the size of which he estimated (in 

 1862) at 150 ft. in length by 50 ft. in width. It was to contain casts 

 of the entire body, coloured after life, of characteristic parts, as the 

 head and face, skeletons of every variety arranged side by side for 

 facility of comparison, the brain preserved in spirit, showing its 

 characteristic size and distinctive structures, &c. " The series of 

 zoology," he says, " would lack its most important feature were the 

 illustrations of the physical characters of the human race to be 

 omitted." 



An adequate exhibition of the Cetacea, both by means of stuffed 

 specimens and skeletons, also always formed a prominent element in 

 his demand for space. " Birds, shells, minerals," he wrote, " are to 

 be seen in any museum ; but the largest, strangest, rarest specimens of 

 the highest class of animals can only be studied in the galleries of a 

 national one." And again : " If a national museum does not afford 

 the naturalist the means of comparing the Cetacea, we never shall 

 know anything about these most singular and anomalous animals." 



When, however, the contents of the museum were finally arranged, 

 nominally under his direction, physical anthropology was only repre- 



* ' On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History,' 2nd 

 edit., 1862, p. 7. 



