380 BOTANY: ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS 



We know to-day how amply science, in the persons of the 

 late Sir William Flower and his successors, has fulfilled the 

 scientific mission of the Natural History collections at South 

 Kensington. The germ of this success lay in the movement 

 set afoot by Hooker and Huxley to amend and strengthen 

 the influentially signed memorial that laid the case for science 

 before the Prince Consort as head of the Kensington Committee. 



The two friends joined forces on what Huxley called their 

 ' permanent Committee of Public Safety ' to watch over what 

 , was being done. Huxley, who professed himself ' thoroughly 

 roused,' eagerly enlisted the support of the progressive 

 among the scientific and the scientifically inclined among 

 public men and editors of the Eeviews, and as for the atti- 

 tude of the Laodiceans in science he writes with cheery 

 defiance : 



I don't think it is necessary to trouble one's head about 

 such opposition. It may be annoying and troublesome, 

 but if we are beaten by it we deserve to be. We shall have 

 to wade through oceans of trouble and abuse, but so long 

 as we gain our end I care not a whistle whether the sweet 

 voices of the scientific mob are for or against me. 



A few passages from Hooker's letters may be quoted : 



To T. H. Huxley, 1858 



My present impression is that a compromise may prove 

 to be the best thing anything to keep out of the K. Gore 

 people's clutches and that if we could only satisfy our- 

 selves that the Nat. Hist, would certainly be moved we 

 should without delay apply for a building in the Eegent's 

 Park, near the Zoolog. Gardens, so arranged that vast 

 sufficient Galleries should be filled with enough Birds and 

 Beasts for the public to gape at daily, with parallel private 

 side galleries where Naturalists could daily work (and where 



was the order of the day. Finally the Government ended its partnership 

 with the Exhibition commissioners, ?nd became sole owners of the Kensington 

 site. 



A familar nickname for South Kensington and all its works sprang from 

 an interim iron building erected in 1855, unjustly supposed to be from Cole's 

 designs ; it was popularly known as the Bromptou Boilers, or shortly ' The 

 Boilers.' 



