January io, 191 8] 



NATURE 



365 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.] 



The January Meteors of 1918. 



I WATCHED the northern sky during most of the in- 

 terval between 6h. and loh. on January 3, and recorded 

 eleven Quadrantids. The conditions were not good; 

 there was a slight fog, through which the stars of 

 Ursa, Draco, etc., shone dimly, and the air was frosty, 

 the temperature being about 26°. 



The Quadrantids observed were, in the majority of 

 cases, near their radiant at 233° + 595°, and moved 

 slowly. This position is near t Draconis, and about 

 6° north of that usually determined in past years. I 

 am at a loss to explain the cause of the discordance, 

 the data of the present year being considered quite 

 satisfactory. In the circumstances the results recently 

 obtained by other observers will be awaited with special 

 interest. W. F. Denning. 



44 Egerton Road, Bristol. 



This evening, between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., looking 

 north, twenty-two meteors were observed at Sidmouth, 

 South Devon. The most brilliant one appeared about 

 8.15 p.m. G.M.T., and was travelling in a south- 

 easterly direction at a moderate speed. The meteor 

 was of a reddish colour, and was followed by a long 

 trail of white light. It was frosty and beautifully 

 clear, excepting a slight haze for a short interval. 

 Winifred L. Lockyer. 



Salcombe Regis, Sidmouth, January 3. 



NATIONAL MUSEUMS IN PERIL. 



THE report that the Government proposed to 

 requisition the British Museum as the head- 

 quarters of the new Air Board has resulted in 

 a storm of protest from many men of light and 

 leading- throughout the country, and from cor- 

 porate bodies concerned with the promotion of 

 the intellectual welfare of the nation. The corre- 

 spondence published in the Times and other 

 journals represents only a small fraction of the 

 budgets received, and it is evident that the Govern- 

 ment will bring upon itself nothing but obloquy 

 if it persists in the action contemplated. Since we 

 referred last week to the projected dismantling of 

 the galleries at Bloomsbury, it has been made 

 known that the Office of Works has surveyed the 

 Natural History Museum at South Kensington 

 m with the view of using the building for the pur- 

 p poses of other Government departments, and has 

 reported in favour of doing so. The very existence 

 of our two greatest national institutions is thus 

 threatened, unless a united effort is made at once 

 to convince the Cabinet of the unnecessary and 

 ruinous proceeding to which certain administrative 

 officials, with the usual indifference to scientific 

 interests and inability to understand scientific 

 values, desire to commit it. 



The high-handed method adopted in the pro- 

 posal to commandeer the two museums cannot be 

 justified even by the provisions of the Defence of 

 NO. 2515, VOL. 100] 



the Realm Act. Sir Arthur Evans states that the 

 trustees of the British Museum were not consulted 

 upon the matter, though they are responsible for 

 the collections, not as Government nominees, but 

 under an Act of Parliament. They were astounded 

 upon receiving from the Air Board a requisition 

 for the building to house the Board's establish- 

 ment, and at once sent a strong protest to the 

 Government against the scheme.* Even an enemy 

 invader could not adopt a more arrogant attitude 

 towards the trustees than that shown by the 

 representatives of the Government. The col- 

 lections were regarded as so much furniture which 

 could be packed up in a few days l^y workmen 

 and conveyed in pantechnicons to convenient 

 places of storage until after the war. As " A Lon- 

 doner " writes in the Times of January 4 in an 

 attempt to justify the official attitude : " It is pretty 

 widely understood that the Air Board is willing 

 and anxious to put its large resources in trans- 

 port and labour at the service of the nation for 

 the removal of the contents of the British Museum 

 to places of safety which the Board has already 

 inspected and approved." 



This semi-official pronouncement reveals entire 

 incapacity to appreciate the difficulty of the 

 problem of dealing with the contents of the 

 museum. The whole of the objects are considered 

 as goods which may be removed in a few days and 

 returned without detriment at a later period of re- 

 construction. Because a selected number of objects 

 have been carefully transferred to places of security 

 by museum officials during the past two years, as 

 a precaution against air-raids, it is assumed that 

 the \\4iole may be dealt with summarily by ener- 

 getic workmen under the supervision of experts. 

 The absurdity of this view will be manifest to any- 

 one acquainted with museum work. To make a 

 selection of fragile objects and other national 

 treasures, and to take measures to preserve them 

 from damage, are very different matters from 

 that of clearing space without reference to what 

 it occupies. It is certain that if the indiscriminate 

 and hurried dismantling of the museum is pro- 

 ceeded with, many of the objects taken away will 

 never be worth bringing back, and it would be 

 just as well to make a bonfire of them at once. 



Only a small proportion of the contents of the 

 museum could be removed in time for the space 

 they occupy to be of any use to the Air Board. 

 The library must remain, and the larger sculp- 

 tures, including the more important pieces of the 

 Elgin marbles, the Assyrian bas-reliefs, and the 

 Egyptian statuary. The ethnographical collec- 

 tions cannot be disturbed without certain destruc- 

 tion of many objects. The glass, pottery, porce- 

 lain, and faience collections, the ancient and 

 medieval gems, rings, and jewelry, the Greek 

 vases, the Babylonian clay tablets, the Egyptian 

 pottery and images, the terra-cottas, the bronzes 

 — all these can be moved only with an infinitude of 

 skilled handling and packing, and in a period of 

 time which might well run into years rather than 

 months. No, it must be clearly understood that 

 if the museum is to be taken for the Air Board — 



