BEITISH MUSEUM COLLECTIONS 379 



and endless others added.' The Hookers were summoned 

 to meet the Trustees of the British Museum on the subject 

 of the Botanical collections coming to Kew. 



Brown [he writes to Harvey] leaves everything to Bennett 

 except the fossils, which he gives to Brit. Mus. if they will 

 keep them with the plants ; if not they are to go to 

 Edinburgh. The Trustees will put Bennett in Brown's 

 place and keep their collections at B. M., but whether Govt. 

 will not insist on the Brit. Mus. N. Hist, collections being 

 turned out of the building is quite another question. My 

 idea is, that eventually all the Nat. Hist, will go to Kensington 

 Gore but the plants, which will come here. 



That the collections should be moved from the dust and 

 grime of their cramped quarters at the British Museum was 

 certainly an excellent thing ; the zoologists wished the zoo- 

 logical specimens to go to a new museum in Eegent's Park, 

 close to the living animals in the Zoological Gardens ; the 

 botanists were agreed that the botanical collections should 

 be merged in the greater Kew collections, instead of main- 

 taining an independent existence. But Natural History 

 carried little weight in the House of Commons, and was very 

 slightly represented among the British Museum Trustees, 

 Geologists and Physicists especially having been appointed to 

 this body owing to official interest in the Jermyn Street Museum. 

 Thus in the eyes of working men of science there was great 

 danger ahead lest the collections should be handed over to the 

 charge of the non-scientific Science and Art Department, and 

 that at South Kensington science and the interests of research 

 should be subordinate to exhibition as a popular show. 1 



1 The surplus from the Great Exhibition of 1851, amounting to 213,000, 

 was invested by the Commissioners in land at South Kensington. Here a 

 Museum of Art was established, the nucleus of which consisted of exhibits 

 purchased by the Government. To these others were gradually added, such 

 as the collections from Marlborough House, the Sheepshanks collection, and 

 so forth. Tn natural sequence proposals followed for the transfer bodily to 

 the same centre of other institutions and museums that received Government 

 support, especially those connected with scientific instruction. For in 1853 

 the Science and Art Department was detached from the Board of Trade by 

 the amalgamation of several minor establishments with the School of Design, 

 under the Secretary of the latter and the indefatigable Henry Cole (afterwards 

 K.C.B.), himself the chief organiser of the Great Exhibition, and reorganisation 



